The Coldstone (33 page)

A lamp burned on the table, but the room was empty. Mrs. Bowyer shut the panel behind her. It was midnight, and the lamp stood burning in an empty room. Where were those whom it should have lighted? She stood there with the dread heavy at her heart and the minutes ticking away on the old clock with the silver face. The dread became more than she could carry in silence. A sort of groan passed her lips. The candle-flame shook with her shaking hand. With an effort that took all her strength she forced herself to move and break the spell. “If I'd ha' stood another moment, I'd ha' dropped,” she said half aloud; and then, “Lord ha' mercy, where's my maid?” And with that she came to the library door and opened it.

The hall was dark. It was like her fear. Why was the hall dark if Susan was here? Why had Susan gone into the darkness? Where was she? Mrs. Bowyer thought the dark an evil sign. And now her sharpened fear drove her. She had to find Susan wherever she was. She opened three doors in succession, only to see black, empty rooms. Then she took her skirts in her hand again and began to climb the stair.

She climbed slowly, holding on to the oak rail. Every now and then she stopped and took her breath. The last time she had come up this stair it was to sit for an hour at Sir Jervis' side before he passed. The first time—no, she couldn't remember the first time; it lay so far back behind the barrier which separates the child who thinks and remembers from the infant whose days are just a pleasant coloured pattern that shapes itself and is gone. Between the first time and the last there lay nearly a century.

She passed the turn of the stair and stood for a while looking down into the black hall. There was a strange feeling about the house to-night. It was hushed and silent, but it was not asleep. It made her think of times when she had laid awake as a child and been afraid to move, or stir, or even breathe, for fear of something that was hidden in the darkness. She thought that was how the house was to-night—keeping terribly still, and holding its breath.

The sound at the door did not take her unawares. It was just as if she was expecting it—the faint sound of a door opening and closing again—and as she heard it old Susan Bowyer turned her head a little to the right and blew out the flame of her candle as composedly as if she had just said her prayers and made ready for bed. The end of the wick glowed, and she pinched it out with a dexterous thumb and forefinger. Then she stood listening. Someone had come into the glazed passage through the door that opened from the village street. Someone was coming into the hall through the second door, and there was no sound of a turning key. The doors had not been locked—had not been locked?—or had been unlocked?

Mrs. Bowyer could see the hall door moving; because outside darkness is never quite so dense as the darkness in a house, and the door looked blacker than the passage beyond it. She could see the black door move, but she could not see who came through it; only she knew that someone had come through it, because there was a sound of stealthy movement. She stood quite still. The person who was moving must know the house. The faint sound passed the library door and was cut short by another sound, the falling to of the baize door that led to the kitchen wing.

Mrs. Bowyer began to come down the stairs with surprising agility. She left her useless candlestick on one of the oak steps and held up her skirts with both hands. What did she want with a light, when all was said and done? There wasn't anywhere in all the house that she couldn't have walked blindfold either by night or day and never have to stop to think whether she might stumble.

She went through the swing door with just enough of a pause to make sure that there was no one in the dark on the other side of it. The passage had an empty feeling, but, as Susan had done before, she stopped just short of the housekeeper's room, and heard voices coming from the other side of the door; only where Susan had found the door open, Mrs. Bowyer found it closed. She came up to it cautiously and listened. The door was closed, but not latched. The latch had a trick of slipping these fifty years.

Mrs. Bowyer pushed the door with the tip of one finger. It moved about half an inch, and she could see that there was some sort of light in the room beyond—dim lamp or lantern light, or perhaps a candle like her own. There were two voices in the lighted room, and one of them she knew. There was a man talking to a woman, and a woman answering a man.

Mrs. Bowyer let go of her skirts, dratted her trembling knees, and held on, with one hand at the handle of the door and the other at the jamb. The man was speaking now. Even in a whisper, there was something precise about the way in which he said,

“I entirely fail to see why he should think himself in a position to give me orders.”

“Oh, but you ought not to have come in!” The woman's voice shook and was very much afraid.

“Where is he?” said the man contemptuously.

“He went down—oh, a long time ago. I don't know what is happening. Oh, I
wish
he'd come back!”

“Then I'm going down too.”

Mrs. Bowyer's knees stopped trembling.

There was a wailing cry of “Oh, don't leave me!”

Mrs. Bowyer shut the door gently but firmly upon the man's reply and slid home the stout bolt which was just above the lock. Thirty years before there had been a burglary scare in the neighbourhood, and Sir Jervis had had a bolt fixed on the outside of every door on the ground floor. The bolt creaked a little. She picked up her skirts and ran to the corner, round it, and up to the second door. She reached it and slipped the bolt just as the handle of the first door was turned and shaken.

Mrs. Bowyer stood back breathing rather quickly. “Won't break down that door in a hurry, the rumbustious robber,” she said to herself. “No one won't break down that door in a hurry, let alone not daring to make a noise.” She heard the second handle tried, and chuckled. The window opening into a small closed courtyard did not trouble her at all. The robber was caught, safe and sure, and there he could stay until she found her maid and Anthony Colstone. The robber was Anthony Colstone's affair, and not hers. “Both of 'em's his affair if it comes to that—sure and certain they are. And oh, Lord help us, where's my maid?”

She was standing away from the bolted door, her mind so much taken up that it was only when she turned that she became aware of the door at the head of the cellar steps standing ajar and a faint glow of light coming through the opening. It should have been locked and bolted at this hour of the night. She turned from the vague sounds which came from the housekeeper's room and opened the cellar door. The steps ran down into the light—not a bright light, but just enough to make a world of shadows. The dark lay on the steps like splashes of ink.

Mrs. Bowyer blinked once or twice as she descended, treading softly. When she was still three or four steps from the bottom she stood still. The place was the central hall into which other cellars opened. A lantern stood on the floor a little to the right of where the steps came down. There was an old mowing machine beside it, and a broken ladder. The light fell on a packing-case or two and some sacks. The light fell on a man lying face downwards in the middle of the stone floor, his arms thrown wide. His face was hidden, but Susan Bowyer knew at once that this was a stranger whom she had never seen before. The black sleek hair, the curve of the ear, the long delicate hands were all quite strange to her and to Ford St. Mary. She gazed at him without emotion. It was plain that a judgment had overtaken him, and she considered it extremely proper that, as she herself would have put it, “such should be the case.”

She was about to turn and mount the steps again in order to rouse Lane, when the man groaned.

CHAPTER FORTY

Afterwards Mrs. Bowyer said that her flesh “creepst” all over. At the time she remained commendably calm. The man obviously wasn't dead. If he wasn't dead, how nearly dead was he, and could he do anyone a mischief, or couldn't he?

The groan was a low one, but somehow or other it did not sound to Susan Bowyer like the groan of a dying man. “'Tis more like as if he was in mortal pain and not wanting nobody to know,” she said to herself. And as she said it, the man groaned again, and she saw the hand that was nearest her contract as if in some spasm of agony. The deep groan and the fingers that made as if they would dig themselves into the unyielding stone meant pain.

Mrs. Bowyer came down another step. A judgment was a judgment, but she had nursed too many sick people to be able to stand aloof when pain called to her. As she moved, the man moved too. His hands beat the stone. He raised his head with a choking sob. Mrs. Bowyer thought that he said “Susan,” but he didn't say it to her. He got up on his knees and showed a white face streaming with sweat, and the eyes of a man in torment. He took his head in his hands and swayed, and groaned, and muttered. He certainly did not see the cellar or old Susan Bowyer standing at the bottom of the steps; he saw only the wolves that were tearing him, and would tear him for ever. He said, “What's the use? Susan—what's the use? Susan—
Susan!
What's the use, I say? I can't reach you—I can't touch you, but you're mine—you've always been mine—you don't know it, but you're mine—
always.
”

He stumbled on to his feet, and he looked right past Mrs. Bowyer with those tormented eyes.

“Oh, my God! What have I done?” His voice sank groaning to a whisper. “Susan—what have I done? They'll be together—it doesn't hurt them. Susan, I haven't killed you—I've killed myself!
Susan!
”

Old Susan Bowyer took the shock of his words with a steady front, but inwardly they were like blades of ice cutting into her. She thought the man was mad, and she thought that he had killed Susan. If his words meant anything, they meant that. With a deadly cold at her heart she went up to him and put a hand upon his arm.

“Where's my maid?”

Garry O'Connell stared at her. He was in one dream, and she was in another. His brain reeled with the distance between his dream and that of any other living soul. He was alone. He had killed Susan.

Mrs. Bowyer shook him slightly.

“What ha' you done with Susan?”

“I've killed her,” said Garry O'Connell.

Mrs. Bowyer's hand tightened on his arm. She did not believe him, but just to hear it said was like the clap of thunder that leaves a man dazed and silly. She said, in a loud, shaking voice,

“You ha'
not!
”

“I've killed her,” said Garry O'Connell. “She's dead and buried, and a stone over her head.” He broke into a terrible laugh. “The stone that Merlin blessed!”

“An' I saw it just so clear as I ever see anything in all my born days—just so clear as I ever see anything. An' if it wasn't the Lord a-showing it to me, who was it? That's what I'd like to know. I see it in the twinkle of an eye.” This was Mrs. Bowyer afterwards. At the time she held Garry O'Connell firmly by the arm, looked into his wild eyes with a dark, steady gaze, and said, “Don't you talk nonsense, my lad!”

Something penetrated the dream. Perhaps it was the tone of brisk authority, perhaps it was the courage and faith behind the tone. He trembled under her hand and repeated,

“She's under the Stone.”

“Then we'll get her out.”

Garry dropped his voice to a dreadful whisper.

“The treasure's there—Philip Colstone's treasure—and two dead Colstones to guard it.”

The hand on his arm was clenched.

“What ha' you done with them?”

He laughed again and wrenched away from her.

“I? Nothing—nothing at all. But—there's no air. The stone is shut, and there's no air.” With the last word his voice rose into a scream.

He snatched up the lamp, crossed the cellar running, and disappeared through the open door at the end. Mrs. Bowyer followed the light which swung and wavered ahead of her. In all her years she had never seen the opening of the low, heavy door. Now it stood wide. The lantern light went dancing along the passage behind it and down into a vaulted room. When she came down the steps, Garry O'Connell stood in the middle of the floor with the lantern hanging from his hand. His head was a little bent, as if he were standing by a grave. The light shone on a flagstone deeply cut with two interlaced triangles.

“
Hic jacet
—Susan,” he said. And then all of a sudden he let the lantern fall with a jangling crash and threw himself down over the stone, calling aloud, “Susan—Susan—
Susan!
”

The lantern rocked and steadied. The light still shone. From the other side of the stone there came the sound of knocking. Mrs. Bowyer spoke in a deep harsh voice which she did not know for her own:

“Open that stone! Open it at once!”

The knocking ceased. Another sound took its place—the muffled, hollow sound of someone shouting in a confined space.

Mrs. Bowyer put a commanding hand upon Garry's shoulder.

“Now, my lad, look sharp!” she said. “There's no sense in calling through a stone. You look a bit lively and open what's got to be opened.”

Garry O'Connell lifted his head with a jerk, looked her in the face, and sprang up. With a sort of convulsive energy he struck the wall with his hand and drove with his right foot against the sign that was cut upon the turning stone. The stone turned, tilted, showed a black square, and Mrs. Bowyer, picking up the lantern and looking, as she herself would have said, “down over,” saw the light strike on Anthony Colstone's upturned face. What she really saw first were his eyes, unnaturally light because his forehead and cheeks were as black as a sweep's.

She said, “Lord, ha' mercy!” and then, in a sharpened voice, “Where's my maid?”

As Anthony stooped, his voice started an echo.

“She's faint. Get out of the way, and I'll lift her up.”