Danger Point (8 page)

THE one room that Lisle really liked in the big house was her own sitting-room. It was small, and the panelled walls had once been painted white. They had deepened now to the tone of old ivory. It had curtains of faded green brocade, and an old Chinese carpet which had gone away to the colour of grey-green water. Everything in the long slip of a room was old — a bureau of bleached mahogany; a high-back couch; a book-case; a little upright piano with flutings of ash-green silk so tender that it tore at a touch, and a fretwork scroll which displayed the signs of the treble clef on the one hand and the bass on the other. It had a very sweet, faint tone, and when Lisle was quite alone it gave her pleasure to touch the yellow keys and make them sing. There were three windows looking to the lawn, the cedar and the sea.

Lisle came in through the middle one, which was a door, and Miss Cole rose from the edge of an upright chair and advanced to meet her. Nobody would have taken her for Cissie Cole’s aunt. Where Cissie was long, limp, and straw-coloured, Miss Cole was small, plump, and brisk. Her eyes were as bright and brown as a bird’s. She had a high, fixed colour and a darting way with her head. She began to speak at once, all in a hurry, and as she spoke she got out a handkerchief and dabbed her face and neck.

“How do you do, Mrs. Jerningham. Very hot today, I’m sure, isn’t it? And I do hope you’ll pardon me bringing you in from the garden, and a lovely tree to sit under and all, and the breeze from the sea — most enjoyable, I’m sure. You wouldn’t hardly credit how hot it is in the village, but there — we get the shelter in the winter, so where you lose one way you gain the other, and I’m sure we’ve all got something to be thankful for if we take the trouble to look for it.”

Lisle said, “Oh, yes, ” and, “Won’t you sit down?”

Miss Cole sat down on a small Victorian chair worked in cross-stitch with a pattern of roses, thistles, and shamrocks. The groundwork had once been purple but was now grey. A little dull red still lingered about the petals of the full-blown rose, but the shamrock and the thistle were mere wraiths. Miss Cole laid a bright brown handbag on the carpet beside her, smoothed down the skirt of her best dress, a rather lively blue artificial silk, and broke into polite enquiry.

“I hope you’re none the worse, Mrs. Jerningham. I’m sure I’m as pleased as pleased to find you up and about. I’m not one to go to bed myself. You must have had a shocking turn with the car all smashed to bits like it was, and next door to a miracle you’ve not been hurt, so it stands to reason it must have been a shock and no saying when it’ll come out. My own sister-in-law’s sister had a fright with a tramp some time in December, and six months to the day she had to have two good back teeth out, and right or wrong, that’s what she put it down to, because all her family had wonderful good teeth, and as she said to me herself, ‘Why should I lose mine, if it wasn’t for me having a shock?’ And I’m sure we must all hope you won’t have any effects like that.”

Lisle smiled at her.

“Oh, I’m sure I shan’t.”

“Nobody can’t be sure,” said Miss Cole briskly. “And of course a shock it’s bound to have been. All broken up the steering was, so they say, but of course what everyone wants to know is what call had it got to break. Things don’t break of themselves — that’s what everyone says, and begging your pardon, I’m sure, for repeating it. There’s some that think maybe Pell might know more about it than he’s any right to—”

“Miss Cole!”

Miss Cole darted her head like a bird pecking at a worm. She wore a shiny black hat with a bunch of bright blue cherries at the side. Every time she made one of her quick movements they rattled on the brim like hail.

“I’m sure I beg your pardon, Mrs. Jerningham, but you can’t stop people passing remarks—and when it’s an accident right there in the village and that Pell in the bar of the Green Man no more than a week ago letting on that those that went against him never had no luck after. Tom Crisp heard him with his own ears. ‘No one never did me down, and got away with it’ — that’s what he said, and, “Mark my words, there’s some that’ll get what’s coming to them, no matter what high horses they’re riding now.” And I’m sure I beg your pardon for repeating such language, but I thought Mr. Jerningham ought to know.”

“I thought Pell had gone away,” said Lisle.

Miss Cole darted again.

“That Pell? Not he! He’s one of those that’ll hang about as long as there’s any mischief to be done — and boasting how he can get a job as easy as kiss your hand!”

Lisle felt an uneasy distaste. She wanted to change the conversation, but found herself helpless. Miss Cole had come here determined to talk about Pell, and talk about him she would. Almost without her own volition Lisle found herself asking the question which Miss Cole intended her to ask.

“Has he got a job?”

“Up at the aerodrome,” said Miss Cole portentously. “And in the Green Man every night, talking big about the money he gets, and what a lot they think of him up there.” She dabbed at the beads of sweat on her forehead and chin. “And if that was all, he’d be welcome and none of my business — and I’m sure no one can say I’ve ever been one to push myself into other people’s affairs. But there it is and you can’t get away from it. Cissie’s my niece and a poor orphan girl without a father or a mother to stand up for her. And I’ve not got anything against my brother James, but he’s not one to look beyond his own family, and what with the business, and nine children, and Ellen no manager, I’m not saying he hasn’t got his hands full. So if I don’t look out for Cissie, there’s no one else will, and she’s not one to look out for herself.”

“Is Pell annoying her?” said Lisle.

Miss Cole bridled.

“If he annoyed her, I wouldn’t be worrying. He don’t let her alone, and it’s got so she don’t want to be let alone.”

Lisle said, “I’m sorry.”

“She’ll be sorry herself when it’s too late, ” said Miss Cole with a dart. “And how she can — a good girl like Cissie — brought up the way I brought her up! I’ll say this for her, if she’d known he was married from the first of it, she’d never have looked his way, but it wasn’t but a fortnight ago it come out, as you know. And there she sits and cries, and says she’s got herself so fond of him she don’t know what to do. That’s when I came up to see Mr. Jerningham — and most kind he was, I’m sure — a real feeling heart, and might have been the girl’s father. And ‘Out he goes!’ he said, and went straight off and had it out with him. And what I’ve come up about now is whether Mr. Jerningham could get him out of the aerodrome, and I didn’t like to trouble him after he’d been so kind and all, but I thought perhaps if you were to say a word—”

Lisle blenched.

“I don’t think I could.”

It wouldn’t be any use. Dale wouldn’t. He’d say it wasn’t his business — and it wasn’t.

“If you would just say a word,” said Miss Cole, rattling her cherries. “I’m sure I’ll never have a moment’s peace while that Pell’s anywhere around. I don’t say Cissie isn’t fond of him, but she’s right down frightened of him too. If she says she won’t meet him, he tells her she’d best or there’ll be something happening to her she won’t like, and as long as he’s anywhere around there’s no telling what he’ll be up to. So if you’ll just say a word—”

“I don’t think I can,” said Lisle in a soft, distressed voice. “I don’t think it would be any use, Miss Cole — I don’t really.”

Miss Cole fixed her with a bright, persuasive gaze.

“If you would just mention it. And of course I know what gentlemen are — they take ideas, and then it’s no good going on, because it only puts their backs up, but Mr. Jerningham’s always been so kind, so perhaps if you could bring it in just in the way of talk—”

“Yes, I could do that — but I don’t think—”

“You never know,” said Miss Cole brightly. “And I won’t keep you, Mrs. Jerningham, but if you could say a word to Cissie yourself I’m sure she’d think the world of it.”

Lisle said “Oh—” and then, “Would she?” in a doubtful tone. She didn’t feel old enough or wise enough to give advice to Cissie Cole. And what could she say to her?… “You’ve lost your heart to the wrong man. Take it back again. Don’t be sorry any more, because he isn’t worth it. Save what you can whilst there is still something to be saved.” She might say these things. But would Cissie listen, or would it help her if she did?… Faint and far away something whispered, “You might say those things to yourself.” It stabbed right through her. She said,

“Is she very unhappy?”

“Cries herself sick,” said Miss Cole, for once succinct.

Lisle put a hand up to her cheek. It was a gesture which spoke distress.

“But would she mind? I shouldn’t like—”

Miss Cole shook an emphatic head. The cherries rattled.

“She thinks the world of you. There’s no one she’d listen to more than what she would to you. I’m sure I was ashamed to think she’d come crying to you the way she did about that Pell, but she couldn’t say enough about your kindness, and she took notice of what you said, because she told me some of it. You know how it is Mrs. Jerningham, if a girl’s got a fancy for anyone she’ll listen to them, and if she hasn’t she won’t — and I’m sure Cissie thinks the world of you, as I said before.”

Lisle got up. If she didn’t say she would see Cissie, Miss Cole would go on talking until she did. It would really be easier to talk to Cissie than to go on talking to Miss Cole. And she could give Cissie her green checked coat. That was a really splendid idea. It would cheer Cissie up, and it would get rid of the coat. Every time she saw it in her cupboard she could hear Alicia say, “That ghastly coat!” But Cissie would love it.

She said quickly, “If Cissie could come up this evening, I could see her. Tell her I’ve got something for her.”

Miss Cole got up too. She picked up her brown handbag, put away her handkerchief, and shook hands.

“It’s very kind of you, I’m sure,” she said.

WHEN Miss Cole had gone Lisle stood at the glass door and looked out. The group on the lawn had broken up. The chairs were empty. The shadow of the cedar covered them. If she had to speak to Dale about Pell, she wanted to get it over. If he had come in from the garden, he might be in the study. Nobody ever studied there, but it was by custom and inheritance Dale’s own room. Everything at Tanfield was like that. Lisle’s little sitting-room was not hers because she liked it, but because the mistress of Tanfield had always had that room. Her great gloomy bedroom was hers for the same reason. If she had wanted another room she would have wanted it in vain.

She came to the study by way of the gunroom next door. Afterwards she wondered why she had not gone straight to the study door. If she had, things might have been different. But think as she would, she could get no nearer to knowing why she had gone through the gun-room. The door was ajar — it might have been that. She crossed to the door which led into the study and found it a hand’s-breadth open. There was no sound from the room beyond. She pulled the door a little wider and looked in.

She saw Dale. He had his back to her and his arms about Alicia Steyne. She could not see Alicia’s face — only a piece of a white skirt, and her hands locked about Dale’s neck and Dale’s head bent to hers. She saw no more than she had to see, and turned and came away.

When she reached her sitting-room she sat down on the couch and tried to steady herself. A kiss doesn’t mean very much. With some men it doesn’t mean anything at all. She mustn’t make a mountain out of a molehill or think that the world had come to an end because Dale kissed his cousin. No, she wouldn’t cheat herself either — it wasn’t a cousinly kiss. But she had hurt his feelings. He had brought her a present. She hadn’t liked it, and she had shown that she hadn’t liked it in front of Rafe and Alicia. After that, how easy for Alicia to play on the hurt, to use his old feeling for her and blow some spark of passion into a blaze. If she had been there to watch, she could not have been more sure of what had happened. She had a sense of justice as delicate as it was rare. It could divide between Dale’s fault and her own hurt. She must not cry, because Alicia would see that she had been crying — and she must not let Alicia see, because Alicia hated her. But Dale loved her. Dale had married her, not Alicia. Dale loved her… Her heart turned slowly over. Did he?

Before she had time to answer that Rafe drifted in from the garden.

“All alone, my sweet? Well, that’s my luck, isn’t it? I’ve actually missed Miss Cole. Quotation from topical song — ‘I miss my miss, and my miss misses me.’ I wonder if she does. Alternatively, ‘I kiss my miss, and my miss kisses me.’ ” He made an excruciating face. “A perfectly horrible thought! Do you think she would if I asked her — or rather if I didn’t ask her?” He dropped into a chair and declaimed melodiously:

“ ‘Kisses that by night are stolen

And by night given back again,

These are love and these are rapture,

These are joy and these are pain.’

The poet Heine — my own translation. There wasn’t much he didn’t know about it, by all accounts. What do you suppose Miss Cole would say if I were to recite that to her?”

“She’d think you were being clever — they all think you’re very clever in the village — and she’d say, ‘I don’t know, I’m sure, Mr. Rafe.’ ”

His glance flickered over her. She had a momentary disconcerted feeling that it showed him everything she most wished to hide. But then, after all, it didn’t really matter with Rafe. He took everything so lightly that it didn’t matter. He even gave her the feeling that what burdened her was too light and inconsiderable to matter to anyone. Everything went on the surface with Rafe. What the depths held, or whether there were any depths at all, she did not know.

The flickering glance passed on, touching everything lightly and resting nowhere. Then it came back to her.

“Would you have liked to do this room over for yourself — have everything new?”

She looked at him doubtfully.

“I don’t think so. It doesn’t belong to me.”

She didn’t say what she had said to Aimée Mallam, “Dale wouldn’t like it.” And she didn’t say it, because there was no need to say it. Rafe’s question and her own answer were not on any practical plane, but purely speculative. And that was so well understood between them that Tanfield with its laws and customs irrevocable as those of the Medes and Persians, and Dale, who was their servant, did not come into it at all.

The fleeting gaze was fixed now. It observed her attentively.

“But wouldn’t you like to have a room which did belong to you?”

She said again, “I don’t know—” And then, “I couldn’t — here.”

“But you could have your own part in this room. You haven’t added anything, have you? Everyone who has had it has added something that was theirs. Why don’t you get it new curtains? These will fall to pieces some day.”

She shook her head.

“No — they’re just right with the room.”

She saw him frown, and for a moment the likeness to Alicia Steyne was strong.

“They are right because they are old — is that what you mean? And that makes you a blazing anachronism. Everything in this room is old except us. That’s my grandmother’s piano — Dale’s grandmother, and Alicia’s too. The temper comes from her, but she sang like an angel — I can just remember her. And my father brought the carpet back from China — he was in the Navy, you know — and she got the curtains to go with it. My great-great-aunt Agatha worked that cross-stitch atrocity with the roses, thistles, and shamrocks somewhere about the year of the Indian Mutiny. That’s her mother in the Empire dress over the mantelpiece — a bit of a beauty in her day. And the bureau was her mother-in-law’s. So here you are, surrounded by relics of the past and nothing at all to show for your being here — nothing but Lisle in a green linen dress to show that this is Lisle’s own room. Something queer about that, isn’t there?”

It was just as if someone had touched her with a cold finger. Her hand went up to her cheek. It was cold too. She said,

“Don’t! You make me feel like a ghost.”

He laughed.

“Rather a fascinating thought, don’t you think? Not the old ghosts of a past generation coming back to haunt us, but us, all insubstantial and unreal, stepping into their places and haunting them.”

He saw her whiten.

“Yes — it feels like that. Tanfield makes you feel like that. That’s why I hate it.”

There was a sudden change in his face. It had been gently mocking, but now it changed. Something went over it like the shadow that races over water when clouds are blowing — colour dies and sparkle vanishes. He said in a voice that had hardened,

“Yes, you hate Tanfield — don’t you? But I don’t know that I should talk about it if I were you. For instance” — he was smiling again and his eyes were bright — “I shouldn’t say it to Dale.”

Lisle’s hands went together in her lap.

“Rafe — you won’t tell him!”

He laughed.

“I suppose that means that you haven’t told him yourself.”

“Of course I haven’t. I didn’t mean to say it just now — it just slipped out. Rafe, you won’t tell him! It would hurt him most dreadfully.”

“It might hurt you too, my sweet. Have you thought about that?”

She said, “What do you mean?” and met a look which mocked, demanded, and then mocked again.

“Don’t you really know?”

She shook her head, looking down at her clasped hands.

He whistled softly.

“Not very bright, are you, honey-sweet? Not too bright and good for human nature’s daily food, as the poet Wordsworth said. A perfect woman nobly planned, to warn, to comfort, and command. Only Dale does the commanding in this house, and I’m doing the warning. That leaves you the sweet feminine rôle of comforter. And if Dale has to let Tanfield go, I don’t envy you your job. Have you thought about that?”

Lisle said, “Yes.”

“Well, I should go on thinking about it. I gather there isn’t much prospect of unloading any more land on to the government. Now if you really put your back into it, I feel you might Delilah old Robson into parting with enough hard cash to keep us going for another generation — peace in our time, you know.”

She lifted her eyes and saw that he was not looking at her. He was sitting forward, elbow on knee and chin in hand, staring down at the carpet which his father had brought from China.

“I’m not good enough at pretending,” she said. “I’ve tried, and it’s no use — he sees right through me.”

His eyebrows jerked, the kink in them very apparent.

“Not particularly opaque, are you?” His voice rasped on the words.

“You don’t know how hard I’ve tried.”

A shoulder jerked too.

“My poor benighted child! Are you as dumb as you sound? You can’t try to love, to hate, or to stop loving or hating, or to prevent anyone seeing that you love or hate. I expect Robson’s got you taped just about as well as Dale has. And that being so, suppose you listen to the gypsy’s warning.”

“Rafe!”

He leaned forward, pulled her hands apart, and spread them out palm upwards. They were cold and they quivered.

“A dark man and a fair woman—”

Lisle made herself laugh.

“That’s cards and tea-leaves! Hands start with things about the line of life, and the line of heart and all that sort of thing.”

His fingers tightened on her wrists. She had the feeling that they were stronger than Dale’s for all their slender look.

“Something perfectly frightful happens if you break the psychic spell by talking. There’s a dark man and a fair woman, and wedding-bells, and a narrow escape — and then — what’s this?… Oh, a voyage — a long sea voyage. You’re crossing the ocean to the other side of the world—”

“I’m not!” said Lisle. She tried to pull her hands away.

“Well, I think you’d better — it comes out best that way. Besides, it’s in your hand.”

She glanced up and met a look she could not interpret. It teased, but there was something else. She said on a quick impulse,

“Isn’t there a dark woman in my hand?”

“Do you want a dark woman? all right, you shall have one. She can be one of the reasons for the sea voyage.”

The colour ran flooding into Lisle’s face. She pulled and jerked at her hands to get them free.

“Rafe, let me go! I don’t like it. Let me go!”

He released her at once. She got up, and stood drawing long, unsteady breaths whilst he leaned back and watched her. She had fought hard for her self-control, but it had slipped.

“Why did you say that? Do you want me to go away?”

“I thought it might be a good thing if you went.”

“To the States?”

“A pleasant family reunion.”

She said in a breaking voice,

“I haven’t got any family.”

“Cousins can be very delightful. I think you said that there were cousins. They would have all the charm of the unknown.”

She went over to the glass door. There was an effort of wrenching free and then checking — as if an impetus had spent itself. She said without looking round,

“You want me to go?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Least said, soonest mended, my dear.”

She did turn round then.

“Why?”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“The family reunion — auld lang syne, and hands across the sea.”

Lisle’s head came up.

“I am to go?”

“That is the idea.”

“And Alicia is to stay?”

“That seems to be Alicia’s idea.”

Lisle turned and went out through the glass door. There were four steps down on to the terrace. Just before she took the first one she looked over her shoulder.

“I don’t think you’re very good at telling fortunes,” she said.