Danger Point

Chapter 16

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.