The Youngest Bridesmaid (25 page)

Lou had not intended to fall in with her cousin
’
s highly fanciful scheme for the simple reason that life
had already taught her that things rarely worked out
as one planned. The Melissas of this world could rely on situations developing as they desired, but
Lou was one of the luckless kind. She would probably
end by merely catching a cold, waiting in a damp and
rather unpleasant cave for a deliverer who would fail
to turn up at all; and serve her right too, she thought
prosaically. She had lived too long already in her
enforced world of make
-
believe to count on a storybook happy ending, and the glass slipper was beginning to pinch.

By the time luncheon was over, however, she felt
a need to escape into the open. Piers, eating his meal
in a morose silence which even Melissa seemed unable to break, added little to the civil demands of hospitality. Tibby, waiting on them with unusual
abstraction, appeared for the first time to be showing
her age, muttering to herself, forgetting table ap
pointments, and failing to react to Melissa
’
s little
jokes.

“
What
’
s wrong with the old girl?
”
Melissa asked, ruffled by the old servant
’
s withdrawal, and Lou, with a sidelong glance at Piers, replied:

“You jeered at her starry-gazey pie. Tibby
’
s
very sensitive about local customs—isn’t that right,
Piers?”

“Very likely,” he said without much interest.
“She’s been becoming a little senile for some time.
Rune doesn’t offer much in the way of outlet,
I
suppose.”

“
Believing in local legends and liking local customs doesn
’
t necessarily mean one
’
s senile,
”
Lou said quickly, surprised at the same time that she should wish to champion a woman who had shown
her so much hostility, and Piers
’
eyebrows shot up in amused irony.

“
No, of course not. I was forgetting you dealt in fairy tales yourself, Lou—and no one would call you senile as yet,
”
he said, and smiled a little unkindly as he saw her flush.

After that there seemed nothing more to be said. Even Melissa, having proffered lighthearted pleasantries which had met with scant response, had given up, and when she thought she was not observed, made graphic faces at Lou across the table, intimating that her plan for the afternoon should be reconsidered.

Lou made a face back and left the table with relief. It had, she thought with a faint hint of shame, been rather satisfactory to find that even her glamorous c
o
usin had failed to lift Piers
’
black mood, and she went, with a sense of release, into the open air and the buffeting wind which, though knocking the breath out of her to start, seemed to blow away the confusing issues of the past twenty-four hours.

She scrambled over rocks, and splashed through pools, making for the comparative shelter of the part of the shore that was flanked by the cliffs. The tide was coming in, she saw, breakers sending up a curling wall of foam and spr
a
y, but the sands still stretched, uncovered with water, to the cliffs. Great heaps of seaweed, to
rn
from the rocks, blew wildly across the shining expanse, and gulls swooped sharply, scavenging for food, their screams harsh and shrill on the wind.

Without realizing it Lou had come upon the fissure in the rock face which led to the Druid
’
s Cave, or perhaps, she thought uncertainly, fingering the smooth, cold stone, a visit to the cave had been at the back of her mind, despite her denials to Melissa. For all her first antipathy to the place, she had been piqued by Piers
’
refusal to take her back, thinking him churlish to resent sharing his discovery with her. For all the sinister tales Tibby had attributed to it, the cave had still been beautiful and strange and, Lou thought, only her own imagined danger of
drowning had given her that sense of evil in the first place. Just once more, if it were only to test her own rational common sense, would she venture, and be able to say on return that she had accepted her cousin
’
s childish dare and could agree that there was nothing to cause discomfort but damp and cold, and wet feet.

She squeezed through the narrow aperture, and as she felt her way along the passage, the sudden quiet was uncanny. The sound of the storm evidently could not penetrate to the heart of the cliffs; just every so often a whistling whine echoed down some unseen cranny in the rock, dying away to leave only the monotonous dripping of moisture down the walls.

Lou traversed the passage with, more assurance this time, knowing that there were no pitfalls, apart
from the broken ground, before she came to the cave
itself. Despite her intention to revisit the placed treating it simply as a curiosity, however, she began to experience the tremors of that first fear. She was relieved when the passage began to widen, telling herself that she had merely been suffering from
a
very common form of claustrophobia, but when she emerged from the gloom with the same sense of shock as before at that sharp spear of light cutting across the darkness of the cave, she felt no easier.

It was all just as she remembered it, the rough altar, the pool, the myriad reflections of light from the stalactites, the half-seen outlines of the crude carvings. She stood as she had then, in a shallow pool of water, staring and wondering and a little awed. The cold was intense, the clammy, moribund chill of a place which had never seen the sunlight, and with a little shiver, Lou turned to go. Honor, if that had been in question, was satisfied; she would escape now, and she would not come again without Piers.

Sounds of the storm outside had filled the cave with no more than a ghostly whisper of eddying moans and sighs seeping through the high aperture which let in the light, but as she moved carefully
towards the mouth of the passage, a new sound joined them. At first it was only a long wail, rising and falling as might the wind, then it took shape, echoing eerily from the r
o
ck face, the vaulted roof, t
h
e very stones beneath her feet, stopping her in her tracks.

“
Lou ... ou ... ou
…
it
seemed to say, and Lou turned back to face the cave, her lips stiff with sudden fear.

“
No!
”
she shouted frantically, and heard the echo of her own voice flung back to her,
Oh ... oh ... oh...
!

CHAPTER EIGHT

She l
aughed then, the sharp, staccato laugh that relieved tension, and that, too, came back to her as an echo. How idiotic can one get? she thought; the wind had merely been obliging with its traditional whoo-oo-oo, but even as she chided herself, the sound came again, this time in the shape of words which could hardly be misinterpreted.

Lou ... ou ... ou. Give back … ack … ack … what you’ve stolen … another man’s mate … ate … ate …

“
It
’
s a trick!
”
cried Lou, and the last word echoed back to her with the same hollow sadness of that other voice, and then left silence. The silence was almost more frightening than the voice, and as she waited, the sound of her own heart beating was loud in her ears. She turned once more to go, trying to control her rising panic, and the voice spoke again, disembodied, sexless in its echoing overtones.

Go away ... way
...
way
...
it wailed.
He doesn
’
t love you ... he doesn
’
t want you ... Give back ... ack ... ack before it
’
s too late ... ate ...

“
Who are you?
”
shouted Lou.
“
I don
’
t believe in ghosts—well, not really.
”

I am the
v
oice
...
I am the voice of the drowned to warn you ... ou ... ou ... Lou ...
ou ... go away
,
... he doesn
’
t want you ... Rune doesn
’
t want you
...
you
’
re just a come-by-chance ...
ance …
go away
...
way
...

Reason deserted Lou. All Tibby
’
s tales and warn
ings
came back to choke her with terror and she began stumbling round the cave in a last desperate attempt to trip the trickster in whom she no longer believed, but there was no one there. The altar stone concealed nothing but slime and grotesque fossils which might once have been living creatures, the walls had no hidden recesses and the pool was black and evil-looking but unruffled. She sank down on the wet stones, beginning to grasp the frightening,
uncontrollable sobs of panic, waiting like a trapped animal for the voice to speak again and, like an animal, afraid to move. But the voice did not speak, and after a long time she summoned up enough courage to shout a challenge.

“
Are you there? Have you finished?
”
she called, but only her own voice came back to her.

She was by now so incapable of coherent thought that she imagined that if she moved the voice would return to stop her, that somewhere an eye must be observing her, that if she remained very still and perhaps prayed, the evil presence would go.

It was a fresh sound, however, that
finally roused her to action, the sound of water slapping against rock, the swift little advances and withdrawals of a steadily moving stream which had not been there before. Lou became aware that the stone floor of the cave on which she had been sitting for so long was no longer slimy but otherwise dry. Water was lapping over her ankles and knees, and she got hurriedly to her feet, only to sink down again with a cry of agony as cramp attacked her legs. As she sat there frantically trying to massage back the circulation she looked towards the passage opening and saw, with a totally different kind of fear, that water was pouring through. She remembered Piers telling her, with a certain degree of scorn for her early fears, that the cave never filled, except in times of storm. But this was a time of storm, and the tide had been coming in. Was she then to drown like that poor girl of
the legend? Was this the manner in which she must give back what she had stolen?

“
But I
’
ve stolen nothing!
”
she shouted, returning suddenly to sanity by reason of a more tangible terror.
“
And I
’
m hanged if I
’
m going to climb on to that beastly altar stone and wait meekly for death
...
I
’
ll drown fighting if I have to drown at all!
”

There was no one to hear the foolish bravado of her shouted defiance, but the sound of her own voice helped to restore her nerve. She struggled once more to her feet, ignoring the aches and pains that still shot through her legs, and splashed clumsily towards the passage and began to fight her way out. Sometimes the water was only around her ankles, sometimes well above her knees as she stumbled over the rough, uneven ground. Often she fell, wrenching her ankle so badly at one point that she thought she would be unable to go any further.

She remembered that Melissa had promised to send Piers to find her if she went to the cave, and remembered, too, that she had told herself, with more sense than she now appeared to possess, that most likely she would wait in vain for a deliverer who never came. It was all the more astonishing, in the circumstances, to hear his voice shouting above the wind as she at last reached the entrance to the passage and the blessed daylight, and saw Pier
s
tall figure splashing through the boiling surf, now up to the foot of the cliffs. He must have passed the entrance to the cave without a second thought, for he was walking away from her.

“
Piers!
”
she screamed after him.
“
Oh, Piers, come back!
”

He turned at once and came back at a run, his oilskins flapping, his hair wild in the wind and his dark face a curious mixture of alarm and anger.

“
Good God! You haven
’
t been in the cave, have you?
”
he demanded, catching her by the shoulders with hands that shook a little.

“
Why didn
’
t you come in to find me?
”
she asked, aware suddenly how narrowly he had missed finding her at all.
“
Melissa s-said she
’
d send you.
”

“
What the hell
’
s Melissa got to do with it? I haven
’
t seen her since lunch,
”
he replied roughly, and shook her until her teeth chattered.
“
You senseless bloody-minded little idiot! Don
’
t you realize that in another quarter of an hour or so you wouldn
’
t have got out at all? Why should you suppose I should think of looking for you in there?
”

“
Because of Melissa,
”
she repeated, stupidly, and burst into tears.
“
Piers—I heard the voice,
”
she sobbed incoherently.
“
It said I was to give back what I
’
d stolen—I was to go away—you didn
’
t want
me—Rune didn
’
t want me. It was the voice of that poor drowned
girl...”

The roughness went out of his hands and his voice alike and he held her against him, smoothing her wet head with gentle reassuring fingers.

“
All right, Lou, it
’
s all over now
...
you
’
ve had a bad dream, but it
’
s all right now. Come along home,
”
he said, and she clung to him tightly.

“
You don
’
t believe me, do you? You think I
’
m making it up, but there
is
a voice—Tibby
’
s right.
”

“
I believe
you
believe it, darling, but that
’
s another story. You
’
re all in, aren
’
t you?
”
he replied, and she gave a little sigh.

“
You
’
v
e never called me darling before,
”
she said, able to be astonished even in the midst of her distress, then remembered last night and the monstrous accusation she had thrown at him
which had hurt him so bitterly.

“
Piers,
”
she said,
“
I shouldn
’
t have said what I did last night—I shouldn
’
t have believed Melissa.
”

“
No, you shouldn
’
t,
”
he replied a shade grimly.
“
Still, I
’
m beginning to think I’ve
been a bit bedevilled myself. I too should have known better than to listen to your cousin
’
s fairy tales.
”

“
Fairy tales are only for children—grown-ups shouldn
’
t believe them. I don
’
t believe in mine.
”

“
You
’
re all mixed up, my poor dear, and it
’
s no wonder. Whatever you thought you heard in that infernal cave has shaken you up, hasn
’
t it? What on earth made you go there?
”

“
To make my peace, perhaps—to bargain with the gods or whoever they are in there. But if Melissa didn
’
t tell you, why were you looking for me, then?
”

“
Because you
’
d been out a long time and tides are tricky
in times
of storm. I thought at first you
’
d been craz
y
en
o
ugh to go with the launch.
”

“
Didn
’
t you know? Your irresponsible cousin persuaded Sam to go to the mainland for cigarettes and a radio battery. I ask you—risking life for a radio battery!
”

“
Piers, no! Was it safe? Will he be all right?
”

“
Oh, Sam
’
s a good enough seaman, though he
’
s no right to use the launch without permission, and if it
’
s damaged I
’
ll have the hide off that selfish little bitch. I
’
ll have the hide off her anyway after this.
Did she know you were going to the cave?
”

“
She suggested it. You don
’
t think—you
couldn
’
t
think she meant me to
drown
!
”

“
No, I don
’
t think that, but I
’
m beginning to have certain rather unpleasant ideas about your voice. Perhaps you didn
’
t imagine it, after all. Come on, my dear, if we stay much longer we
’
ll get caught by the tide.
”

He had to help her, for her twisted ankle was too painful to stand much more walking, and presently he picked her up and carried her, slung across his shoulder like a sack. She was too exhausted to try to work out for herself the implication in his last remarks; she only knew she was safe, that his uncomplimentary references to Melissa hadn
’
t sounded much like those of a man in love, and that he had addressed her as darling as if he had meant it.

By the time he had reached the house she was half asleep, and after that things seemed to happen with bewildering unexpectedness. Piers gave curt orders, and Tibby, unfamiliar in the role of comforter, hastened to obey. Lou barely recognized her old enemy in the woman who, with painfully working face and trembling hands, ministered to her needs like the nanny of her imagination. Tibby
’
s distress was, of course, for Sam, the ewe lamb who had filled Piers
’
empty place in her strange, barren affections, but it was pleasant all the same to be of temporary concern and, in her turn, bring what comfort she could to the old servant.

“
Don
’
t worry, Tibby,
”
Lou said shyly, while she submitted to a harsh and vigorous towelling after a bath which had been almost too hot to bear.
“
Piers says Sam is an excellent seaman, and it
’
s not far to the mainland, is it?
”

“
‘
Tes the vanity of it—the sinful vanity, putting a soul in peril for a passing fancy,
”
Tibby said, and her lapse into the island idiom was proof of her disturbance.
“
Sam should have known better,
‘
tes true enough, taking the boat and all, but she f
l
attered him with her serpent
’
s tongue, dared him, for sure, to risk his life for trash.
”

“
My cousin
’
s spoilt,
”
Lou said, feeling in duty bound to make excuses for Melissa, and Tibby snapped back, with a last, ungentle flick of the towel:

“
Aye, like her mother before her. Miss Blanche had the same pretty ways, the same disregard for others.
”

“
But you loved her, didn
’
t you, Tibby?
”

“
Loved? No, we was more like mazed, all of us—young Mr. Robert Merrick as he was then—Piers because she smelt nice and promised the first woman
’
s love he had known, and I because I was past my
first youth
even then and never man nor maid had looked at me twice.
”

Lou stood in humble stillness, unconscious of her nakedness or Tibby
’
s hard gaze slowly softening as it rested on her young, pliant limbs. Three people, caught up in a dream, she thought, just as she herself was caught now.

“
Is everything just make
-
believe?
”
she asked, and the old woman smiled, the difficult, unwilling smile of someone unused to capitulation.

“
Life is what you make it,
”
she replied.
“
And dreams don
’
t last. Mr. Piers maybe knew what he was doing, after all, when he picked you for his bride. Pleasure him, missis—don
’
t be afeared of all that lordly act he puts on. He
’
s always liked to play big.
”

Lou would have liked to embrace Tibby, but felt it was too early yet to take liberties which might be misunderstood. She reached instead for her dressing gown, and turning too quickly on her injured ankle, was reminded by the sudden pain of her ordeal in the Druid
’
s Cave.

“
Tibby—
”
she said, knowing that here, at last, was someone who would believe h
e
r story,
“
I heard the voice. Piers thought I was dreaming or imagining, but I heard it distinctly. It warned me, just as you said—the voice of that drowned girl.
”

Tibby
’
s reaction was unexpected. No sly triumph at the vindication of her prophesies came into her face, only a puzzled look.

“Of what did it warn you?” she asked.

“To go away—to give back what I’d stolen— another man’s mate, it said—your very words.”

“H’m ... m ... now that’s a strange coinci
d
ence. Did it say Piers loved another?”

“Yes, it did. Tibby, how do you know these things? It wasn’t—it wasn’t you playing tricks on me, was it?”

“No, it wasn’t me, missis,” Tibby replied a shade
grimly, “though my words were used.”

“You mean there is no voice?”

“Oh, aye, according to legend. Some believe and some don’t, and it was a long time ago.”

“
Even so, you tried to scare me, didn
’
t you?
”
Lou said accusingly.
“
You wanted to drive me away. You wanted my cousin in my place.
”
Even as she spoke, it seemed strange that she could accuse her enemy so brashly.

“
Because she was his rightful bride, and because I saw Miss Blanche in her
...
‘
tes lonely here on Rune
...
strange thoughts come in the dark nights
...
and ghosts. I had thought with Piers marrying Miss Blanche
’
s daughter to slip back down the years, you see, and then he brought you here and it was as if I
’
d been tricked.
”