Eternity Ring (20 page)

Cicely’s homecoming had fallen very flat indeed. She had braced herself for a scene, and there wasn’t going to be any scene, because Grant wasn’t there. It was the one possibility which had never crossed her mind. There ought to have been a scene, and there were all sorts of different ways in which it might have been played. Grant might have been angry, in which case the sparks would have flown, and oh, what a relief that would have been after bottling everything up for months. Or he might have been frightfully touched and grateful about her rushing back when he was in trouble. An odious small devil-imp cocked a snook at her out of a dark corner in her own mind and said, “So damn likely!” Well then, he would have been angry, or—Cicely didn’t like the “or” very much, because he might have just been polite on top and sarcastic underneath, in which case she would have had to be polite and sarcastic too, and she wasn’t as good at it as Grant was. Now there wasn’t going to be a scene at all. Grant would just peter back into the house and sleep like a log, and scenes before breakfast are really only possible to the cold, vindictive, persevering type of nagger. All that would happen now would be Grant raising his eyebrows and saying, “You’ve come back?” and Cicely saying something on the lines of “As you see,” and going off to help Mrs. Barton make the beds. All the time she was putting away the car and getting Bramble’s sleeping-box in she was kicking herself for having come back when Grant was out, and turning her back on the oddest sensation of relief.

It was no good, the relief persisted, she couldn’t down it. From the moment she had looked in through the gap in the study curtains she had had cold feet about the whole thing. If she could have put the clock back half an hour she wouldn’t have come at all. Or would she? She didn’t know. She knew perfectly well. She didn’t want to see Grant. But you can’t put the clock back ever. She couldn’t put hers back now—not when it meant explaining to Mrs. Barton, and then going back and explaining to Miss Silver, and Frank, and the parents.

She came into the hall with Bramble’s box and went upstairs. Mrs. Barton followed her.

“Mr. Grant must have stepped in for something and then stepped out again—that’s how you must have come to see a light in the study. He could have come in with his key and gone out again, and I shouldn’t have heard him down the other end of the house. Now I’ve a nice kettle on, and I’ve filled two of the stone bottles whilst you’ve been gone, and your bed shouldn’t be damp, for I’ve aired it regularly. One of the last things I got that Agnes to do was to light a fire in your room yesterday and have the mattress out in front of it, so it shouldn’t be damp. And I’ve got your sheets down by the kitchen fire.”

Cicely would rather have slept in any other room, but the mattress was against her. You can’t fling an aired mattress back in a housekeeper’s face, especially when she’s been thirty years longer in the house than you have.

She went into the big low-ceilinged room with its bow-window and its big stripped bed and found it bleak beyond words. The bright chintz curtains were drawn. Everything was quite dreadfully clean, and tidy, and bare. Nothing on the dressing-table, because months ago she had swept it clear with angry, shaking hands. Nothing in the wardrobe, or in the wall-cupboard where she used to keep her shoes. Nothing in the two chests of drawers. Nothing to show that Cicely Hathaway had ever come here as a bride and been quite terribly happy. There wasn’t any happiness in the room now. There wasn’t any unhappiness either—just a blank, empty feeling.

Mrs. Barton went down to fetch the sheets.

The minute his box was in its accustomed corner Bramble hurled himself into it and had to be pulled out again. This happened every night. He lay on his back, waved his paws, and gazed at her with melting eyes. She had to grope for the back of his neck and lift him out like a dead rabbit, after which he stood and watched his bed being made—well crumpled newspaper and a small blanket over it. At this point he was allowed to take a flying leap and curl himself up. Then a loose inner blanket, and a large outer one which went over and under the box, so that he could turn round without uncovering himself.

When he had given an ecstatic sigh and at once plunged into sleep, Cicely got to her feet and went over to the door of Grant’s dressing-room. She remembered the cold feel of the key against her palm when she locked it. It was the last thing she had done before she left the house. She turned the handle now. The door was still locked. She pulled her hand away quickly and went to meet Mrs. Barton and the sheets.

It was midnight before Grant came home. She heard him cross the hall and come up the stairs. He walked as if he was tired. She wondered what he would say if she were to open her door and look out. It was what she would have done before the crash. She would have run to the door and said, “Oh, darling, how late! What will you have—coffee, or cocoa?” If it was as cold as this, he would say, “Cocoa.”

And she would say, “The water’s hot if you would like a bath.” All those homely things which were part of being married.

She heard him go into his room and take off his boots. Extraordinary how much noise men contrived to make with their boots. Bramble gave a faint woof, a long way off in a dream. Grant was making too much noise to hear it, and anyhow the door was locked.

Presently there was silence on the other side of the locked door. Cicely lay in the big bed with two hot water-bottles and was perfectly comfortable and warm. Bramble slept. On the other side of the door Grant Hathaway slept. The night was cold and still. Cicely hadn’t the slightest excuse for not going to sleep, but sleep refused to come. She heard the clock in the hall strike one, and two, and three.

Then, with no apparent transition, she was walking on a long, straight road which went away over an empty moor. It was dark, but that doesn’t matter in a dream. She could see it ahead of her, going on, and on, and on. There wasn’t a light, there wasn’t a house, there wasn’t even a star. There wasn’t anyone else on the road. There was only Cicely Hathaway— Cicely Evelyn Hathaway—and she was all alone. Something blew against her face, and she knew it was her wedding-veil, only in the dream there was such a lot of it. It blew against her in muffling folds. She had to say, “I, Cicely Evelyn, take thee, Edward Grant—to have and to hold— from this day forward—for better, for worse,” but the veil choked her. She couldn’t speak, and she couldn’t get her breath.

She woke sweating, with the sheet over her face and a horrid cold dawn coming up behind lead-coloured clouds. She turned away from it and went to sleep again.

It was broad daylight when she woke again, and Grant was gone.

“Just swallowed his breakfast and out of the house with no time for anything.”

Cicely sat up in bed and looked with dismay at Mrs. Barton in a dark blue overall spotted with white.

“Does he know I’m here?”

Mrs. Barton shook her head.

“Not without you told him.” She crossed over to the blanketed box in the corner. “I should have thought that Bramble would have been up seeing what was what.”

Cicely felt small, and cold, and lost. She murmured,

“Not an early riser—he doesn’t care about it. But he ought to go out now. Will you call him?”

She dressed, breakfasted, and plunged into housework. The morning stretched before her like the endless path of her dream.

Monica Abbott rang up, obviously torn between a desire for confidences and the ever present possibility of Maggie Bell.

“Darling, how sudden! But I do hope you didn’t sleep in a damp bed. They must all be wringing wet.”

How exactly like Mummy to harp on beds. Cicely said,

“You’d better not let Mrs. Barton hear you say so. Mine had just spent a whole day in front of a fire.”

“Cis—”

Cicely’s voice had been casual. It now became that of a dreadfully polite stranger.

“Is there anything you really want? Because if not, I’ve got rather a lot to do here.”

She heard Monica steady herself to say,

“No—no—nothing—it was just—” The sentence died there and the receiver clicked.

Cicely gave an exasperated sigh. Why on earth couldn’t the people who loved you let you alone? She plunged back into housework, embarking on turning out the drawing-room, which hadn’t been used since she went away. It languished in dust sheets and half-drawn blinds after the fashion of Mrs. Barton’s youth, and reminded Cicely quite dreadfully of a morgue. Not, of course, that she had ever seen a morgue, but it gave her the same kind of feeling. There was quite a lot to do.

Grant came home at one. He met Bramble on the doorstep, and Cicely in the hall. She had just finished the stairs, which she had left to the last because they wouldn’t really matter for once if she was put to it, and stood up very pale with the dustpan in one hand and a brush in the other. There was a moment when they couldn’t have heard themselves speak, and another when Bramble’s ecstatic screams of welcome were dying down.

Grant stood there frowning and looked at her. Then he said,

“What’s all this?”

“I’m house-parlourmaid.”

“And just what do you mean by that?”

“Agnes has gone, hasn’t she? I heard last night. I thought I had better come back and help Mrs. Barton.”

“When did you come?”

“Oh, last night—”

He gave her a long, hard look. Something inside her was shaking. What she would have liked to do was to sit down on the bottom step and burst into tears. Naturally she would rather have died. The sound of the telephone bell came as a blessed relief. Grant stopped looking at her and went off to the study with Bramble at his heels. Cicely put down the dustpan and brush and began to dust.

In about two minutes Grant came back, bleak and angry. This time he didn’t look at her at all. His voice was like a northeast wind.

“You’d better go back to Abbottsleigh. You shouldn’t have come.”

“Why?”

“Because I say so.”

She said, “Why?” again.

“If you had a grain of sense you would know why. You’ve been away for months, and you choose this time to come back!”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

She was warming a little. If he could be angry, she could be angry too. But when he spoke again her anger dropped down dead between them.

“Because it’s quite on the cards that I’m going to be arrested.”

“Grant!”

“That was Lenton police station. They want me there. I said I’d be out by two—I can’t make it before. I’m the leading suspect, you know. Joe Turnberry has been hanging about all the morning—to see I don’t give them the slip, I imagine. I should think it is well on the cards that I shall be detained, if not arrested, this afternoon. You’d better get out and stay out.”

She stood up straight and said,

“That’s why I came back.”

He gave a sudden hard laugh.

“I’m a fortune-hunter, but not a murderer—is that it? Quite a gesture, Cis, but I can’t do with it. Better go home—there’s nothing for you here. Do you mind asking Mrs. Barton to let me have something to eat—anything that’s ready. I want to see Johnson again before I go off. He may have to manage on his own for a bit.”

And that was all. The rest was a horrid meal, a few words about the calf which had hurt a leg but was doing all right now—nothing that came near to touching either of them, until at the end he looked back from the door as he was going out and said,

“Get along back to Abbottsleigh, Cis. Mrs. Barton can have someone up from the village for company if I’m kept.”

“I’d rather stay here.”

She was standing between her pushed-back chair and the table. She saw him frown.

“I’d rather you didn’t. Get along back before it’s dark!”

And with that he went out and shut the door. The front door banged.

When they had washed up together Mrs. Barton put on her coat and hat and walked down to the corner to catch the bus into Deeping, a saving of three-quarters of a mile over the straight walk down the Lane. Cicely’s offer to run her down in the car was refused.

“I should prefer to be independent, Mrs. Grant. And the rain is nothing—I’ve my waterproof and a good umbrella, so I’ll just be off. Annie Stedman will be very suitable to replace Agnes, and I know she would like to come. She’s my second cousin Lydia Wood’s daughter and a sensible age. She’s with Mrs. Martin at the post office whilst she looks about her. It’s not every situation she’d take, but no later than Saturday she was saying what a pity we hadn’t a vacancy here. But I wouldn’t like you to think that had anything to do with my giving Agnes her notice. Just is just, and I had no fault to find with her work. But she overstepped, and that is a thing I couldn’t put up with— I’ve seen too much of where it leads to. So I gave her her notice.”

Cicely said, “You were perfectly right,” and Mrs. Barton departed, panoplied in virtue and able with an equable mind to combine family feeling and her duty to her employer.

Cicely watched her go and turned back to the empty house. She hadn’t the slightest intention of returning to Abbottsleigh. When Grant came back they would have it out. If he didn’t come back—she faltered over that, but forced herself to say it—if there was any frightful mistake and they wouldn’t let him come back, then it was her place to be here looking after things whilst he was away.

With Mrs. Barton gone, she had a feeling of relief. The house was all hers. She could go where she liked and do what she pleased, with no one but Bramble to watch her.

She went all over the house. If Agnes was a snake she was a good worker. The house was one of those rambling, untidy structures which have been built on to piece by piece. There was a whole top floor which hadn’t been used in two generations— five rooms opening one into the other, and the farthest room stacked with old furniture which they had always meant to go through, only they had never done it because there were so many other things to do and all the time in the world ahead of them. She stood looking in. They still had all that time. Something said, “No.” Her foot wouldn’t cross the threshold. She shut the door and ran down the steep attic stair.

Even up here there wasn’t any dust. Agnes had done her job. Cicely wondered about Agnes—where she was, and how she had overstepped, and why she had gone into Lenton to tell the police about Grant. It came to her suddenly and sharply that Agnes mattered. If she went on saying that Louise Rogers had come here to see Grant and to accuse him—if she went on saying that she hadn’t seen Grant or heard him about the house after Louise Rogers left, then the police were going to think, and everyone else was going to think, that Grant had killed Louise. Up till this moment the shock of indignation had numbed her perception of his real danger. She had been taken up with the situation as it affected their intimate personal relation. Now, sharply and clearly, there emerged the fact that if Agnes stuck to her evidence there would be a serious case against Grant.

All at once it became intolerable just to stay here and wait. Mrs. Barton would get back before it was dark, but that wasn’t what mattered. When would Grant come back? Why hadn’t she made him take her with him? She could have sat in the car and waited, and she would at least have known what was going on. If they arrested Grant, they would have to come and tell her. You can’t just leave someone sitting outside in a car and not come and say that you have arrested her husband. What was the good of saying why hadn’t she made Grant take her? You couldn’t make Grant do things—it was like pushing a stone wall. And leaving her sitting outside a police station whilst he was being arrested was the sort of thing which would be likely to reinforce the stone with chilled steel. She knew very well that she couldn’t have made him take her into Lenton.

The afternoon dragged unbelievably. She could have taken Bramble for a walk, but she couldn’t bring herself to be out of earshot of the telephone. Grant might ring up. Or Frank. If it was Frank, that would be bad news. She let Bramble out, and presently let him in again. It was rather a relief when he went and scratched at the kitchen door. She opened it for him and watched him make himself comfortable in the armchair. Presently when Mrs. Barton came home she would scold him, and he would put his head on one side, lift a paw, and sparkle his eyes at her. Very undermining. Mrs. Barton was being systematically undermined. She had been heard in a weak moment to address the creature as “Darling.”

Cicely left him to it and made her way to the study. If the telephone bell rang, she would only have to cross the room. She thought it must ring soon. It seemed a long time since she had heard the clock in the hall strike three.

She made up the fire. Grant would be coming in cold. As she straightened up from putting on a log she met the portrait’s gloomy frown—old Mr. Hathaway’s grandfather. Funny how she always thought of him like that, because he was Grant’s great-grandfather, and sometimes when Grant was angry they had the frown in common. The portrait was practically all frown. Everything else had got swallowed up in a general murk.

The frown dominated the room. She looked away from it to her bowls of pot-pourri. She remembered them in August, full of the fresh red roseleaves, gay against the blue and white of the Chinese bowls and so sweet that you could smell them as soon as you opened the door. She put her nose down to the left-hand bowl now. That’s what Grant must have been doing when she looked through the curtain last night. The dried roseleaves weren’t gay any more, but they were still sweet. She put her hand down into the bowl to stir them up, and felt something hard. Just for a moment everything stopped—feeling, pulse, breath, thought. Then automatically her thumb and forefinger closed on the hard thing they had touched. Her hand moved and came up out of the bowl with a round bright ring, a little dusty from the roseleaves. It was the eternity earring.