The Coldstone (23 page)

“Don't!” said Susan. “Oh, Anthony—
please!
I want you to let me go—
Anthony!
”

His arms dropped. She stood away from him, very pale.

“Wait!” She was a little breathless.

Anthony waited. He had thought she was playing with him, but now she was really pale, really shaken. If he had been rough, if he had hurt her—

She drew two or three troubled breaths, then turned and went to the writing-table. The book which he had brought from the Ladies' House lay where she had left it. She opened it at the place between the two testaments and laid her finger on the blacked out name.

“When I came in here I saw this. Do you know whose name it is?”

Anthony stood beside her. He too touched the blotted name.

“It was Philip,” he said. “Cousin Arabel said it was Philip.”

“Yes. Do you know why his name was blotted out?”

“No. Do you?”

“Yes, I know. When I saw this my blood boiled. I went back and I got Gran's bible to show you. Look! They're twin books. Yours has all the Colstones in it, and Gran's has all the Bowyers.” She opened the second book. “Look! It's William—Thomas—William—William—” Her finger travelled down the page. “Here is Gran's father. He was William. Her husband was William too. They were first cousins. Here's his father, Thomas. And here are all Gran's children—William—Thomas—Robert—Susan. Look, Anthony!” She moved her hand. He read, “Susan, born May 1860, married June 1878 Philip Colstone.”

“Philip,”
said Susan with her finger on the name. “
Philip.
That's why they blotted out his name. He ran away with Gran's daughter, Susie, when she was just eighteen and he was twenty-eight. She was awfully pretty—I'll show you her miniature. And she had been brought up with Agatha and Arabel—you know Gran was Sir Jervis' foster sister. But it didn't make any difference—they just blotted him out, and no one ever mentioned him again.”

Anthony put his arm round Susan as they leaned together over the book.

“What happened to them?” he asked.

“Philip took Susie down into Kent. He had a little property there which came to him from his mother. They were very happy. Gran used to go and see them. They died young. Their son Ralph sold the property and went abroad to study art.”

“Where do you come in?” said Anthony.

“How clever you are!” said Susan in a shaky voice. “How
did
you guess?”

Anthony drew his arm closer.

“Where do you come in?”

“I'm Ralph's daughter. I'm Susan Colstone,
Cousin
Anthony.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Cousin.
The word had a teasing sweetness. The look she turned on him teased him too. But the sweetness was over all; it seemed to flow from her with a gay and delicate breath. It was like the colour and the light of a spring day. He saw the sparkle of tears on the blue of her eyes, and a tremendous emotion filled his heart and took away his breath. He dropped his head on her shoulder and stood there, holding her close, feeling how the beating of his heart shook them both.

Susan was lifted into a dazzling calm. “It's like going up in an aeroplane,” she thought. And then she stopped thinking, because she felt Anthony's tears run hot through the thin stuff of her fichu. She slipped her arm about his neck, touched his cheek, and said in a soft whispering way,

“Have you been—so lonely—poor boy?”

Until this moment he had not known that he was lonely. He only knew it now because there had come to him the sudden lover's thought of what life would be like without Susan. It was like looking over a precipice and seeing beneath one the terrible endless void. He raised his head with a jerk and kissed her until she pushed him away.

“Anthony!” This wasn't the creature she had comforted; this was a lover of a very disturbing sort. She pushed him away, blushing.

“Anthony!”
Her voice trembled and reproved.

“I'm sorry. No, I'm not. You don't want me to be sorry, do you? Susan, we're engaged! Isn't it topping? We
are
engaged—aren't we?”

“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.”