The Benevent Treasure

Chapter Ten

On the following day when Candida had finished her driving lesson she found Stephen Eversley waiting for her, his car parked outside the garage. He said briefly,

‘Get in – we’re going for a run.’

‘But, Stephen – ’

‘I want to talk to you. Get in!’

He was banging the door and backing out before she had managed to produce any of her reasons for wanting to get back early. By the time she did produce them they were threading one of Retley’s narrower streets, and she couldn’t very well cavil at his abrupt, ‘I can’t talk in traffic.’ A sideways glance showed her a frowning profile which she had not seen before. Under a slight surface glow there was the feeling that she rather liked a man who took his own way. Not tiresomely or all the time, but when occasion required. She sat with her hands in her lap and just the beginnings of a smile in her eyes until they ran out upon an open road with fields on either side. When she looked at him again the profile was as before. She said in her sweetest voice,

‘May I speak now? Where are we going?’

‘Somewhere where we can talk.’

‘What I was trying to say when you wouldn’t let me was that I ought to get back.’

‘Not yet. I want to talk to you.’

‘Won’t this do?’

‘No, it won’t. When I say talk, I mean properly – not with a dozen ears flapping in that damned café, or when I ought to have my mind on the road!’

‘There doesn’t seem to be anything on the road except ourselves, does there?’

He laughed angrily.

‘There might be at any moment! I’ve got a feeling you could be aggravating enough to distract me from three motor-buses abreast!’

‘Is that a compliment? And do I say thank you?’

‘No, it isn’t, and you don’t! We’re going to park here.’

The road had developed those wide grass verges which foreign visitors so justly consider to be wasteful of land which might be growing something of a more edible nature than grass. Stephen drove on to a green level stretch and stopped the car. Then he turned to face her and said,

‘All right – now we can get going.’

Candida considered him. He had a determined look – determined and purposeful. His hair was ruffled and his eyes were a hard bright blue. She had no idea why she should want to laugh, but she did.

‘Well, it’s your programme.’

‘What are you being meek about? I don’t like it, and you needn’t think it takes me in! Anyhow what is it all about?. We can’t talk in that café – you know that as well as I do!’

‘What do you want to talk about, Stephen?’

He said, ‘You. How long are you staying at Underhill?’

‘I don’t really know. Why?’

‘I don’t want you to stay there.’

His brows were a straight line above frowning eyes. Her own brows lifted a little.

‘Dear Stephen, you needn’t see me if you don’t want to.’

His hand came down upon her knee.

‘Look here, I don’t want that sort of thing! I’m serious!’

Something in her shrank. She didn’t want to know what he meant. She didn’t want to be as serious as all that. She wanted to enjoy the thrust and parry, the advance and retreat, of a surface relationship. She wasn’t ready for anything else – not yet. But she had only to look at him to know that what he had brought her here to say he would say. In a way it pleased her, and in a way she was angry with herself for being pleased. The anger tinged her voice.

‘All right, go on.’

‘I want you to go away.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t like your being there.’

‘Why don’t you like it?’

‘I think it would be better if you went away.’

Her colour had been bright. That is how he saw her, as an angry brightness. She was bare-headed. Her hair shone. Her eyes were darkly blue. And then the brightness went. The carnation left her cheeks and she was pale. She said quite quietly,

‘You will have to tell me why.’

He had known that all along, and he had not thought that it would be hard. It was the sort of thing that came trippingly from the tongue in one of those conversations which you have in your own mind, and which are amazingly intractable when you try to reproduce them in real life. He had to push the words to get them across.

‘I don’t like the place. I don’t like you being there. I want you to clear out.’

‘You still haven’t told me why.’

He said with a sudden jerk in his voice,

‘Do you suppose I want you to go away? You know I don’t. If you go, I’ll come after you – you know that too. Or if you don’t you’re a lot stupider than I think you are.’

He hadn’t meant to say anything like that. The things he had meant to say wouldn’t come. He was a fool to have touched her. He removed his hand abruptly.

This new pale Candida looked at him and said,

‘No, I’m not really stupid. You will just have to tell me why you don’t want me to stay at Underbill.’

He did get it out then. He said,

‘I don’t think it’s safe.’

There was a pause before she said,

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

The trouble was that he didn’t know very well himself. If he had had anything in the way of knowledge to put before her he wouldn’t be sitting here like a tongue-tied fool. All that he had was an echo from the past, some odds and ends of hearsay, and this steady current of feeling setting away from Underhill. He hadn’t liked the place to start with, but it wasn’t any of his business to have likes or dislikes about what only came his way professionally. All the same he hadn’t liked it. The whole situation of the house there under the hill, those cellars into which he had been conducted – there was something about them which promoted more than a misliking. It might have been Miss Olivia Benevent’s cold reluctance to take him there. It might have been partly the feeling that he had not been allowed to make enough of an examination to justify the opinion which was being sought. He had come away angry and frustrated, and had reported that he would have to make a much more detailed inspection before he could advise upon the work to be undertaken. Since when the whole affair appeared to have lapsed. He had two other jobs in the neighbourhood, or he would have had no real pretext for remaining at Retley. He sat there frowning.

She repeated her words with a difference, slight in the arrangement but with a marked deepening of the manner in which they were said.

‘Stephen, what do you mean?’

‘Don’t you ever have a feeling about things?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘I’ve got a feeling about you being at Underhill.’

She was frowning too.

‘A feeling – or a prejudice?’

‘Why should I have a prejudice?’

‘Aunt Olivia could have given you one.’

‘Why should she?’

‘She can be – very – rude.’

Stephen laughed.

‘To the mere architect? You don’t suppose I should worry about that!’

‘You might.’

‘Well, I didn’t. Candida, I don’t want to say any more. Can’t you take it that there are things that won’t go into words – and clear out?’

She had a sudden leaping impulse to do just that. She heard her own voice say,

‘I haven’t got anywhere to go, and they know it.’

‘How do you mean, you haven’t got anywhere to go?’

‘Barbara only had her house on a lease. I couldn’t afford to pay the rent, and somebody else is moving in. I shall have to find a job.’

‘Are you looking for one?’

‘Not yet They want me to stay on. There’s the family history – I think they’re beginning to realise that it won’t get very far if it’s left to Derek.’

Stephen said roughly,

‘I suppose you know why they want you to stay?’

‘Don’t you think it might be because they like having me?’

His roughness was shot with anger.

‘They want to marry you off to their precious Derek!’

She had been sitting round to face him. She turned now and looked straight ahead through the driving screen. The long green verge stretched away before eyes that were clouded by an angry mist. She said in a small cold voice,

‘I think we had better go back.’

He took hold of her and pulled her round again.

‘Don’t be a fool! I want you to listen to me! You don’t care for Derek, and he doesn’t care for you. He’s got a girl in the town – everyone knows that except the Miss Benevents. But that is their plan. When they find out about Derek things aren’t going to be so good for him, or for you. They may find out any day, and when they do there’ll be a blow-up. Look here, Candida, you know that your grandmother was the middle one of the three sisters – you told me about finding a photograph with their names and ages. Well, my old cousin Louisa Arnold knew them all very well, and she says your grandmother or her descendants come in for the greater part of the estate if Miss Cara dies unmarried.’

‘Yes, I knew that. Aunt Cara told me.’

Stephen said bluntly,

‘Well, that cuts Miss Olivia out. Do you suppose she likes it?’

In her mind Candida heard Miss Cara’s little trembling voice – ‘Oh, my dear, she said dreadful things… Our sister Candida died before Papa, and Olivia said she hoped Candida’s children would die too, and then she would come into her own… It was a dreadful thing to say.’ She spoke to drown the sound of it.

‘No – no – of course she doesn’t like it. But there isn’t anything she can do. I mean even if I married Derek it wouldn’t really help.’

He said grimly,

‘She might think it would. He’s an easy-going chap and pretty well under her thumb. But if the plan broke down – ’

There was something there between them.

She said, ‘No!’ But he was putting it into words. He said,

‘Why did she tell you that the tide wasn’t high until eleven?’

It was as if she had known what was coming. The shock of saying it was his, the shock of hearing it was hers. The two shocks came together and were one. Everything else went before the impact. She put out her hands, and he took them. The strong clasp hurt her, but she clung to it. She heard herself say,

‘No – no – it wasn’t.’

‘If you mean it wasn’t the Miss Benevents at the hotel in Eastcliff, you must know perfectly well that it was. I went round there next day, and you had gone, but they hadn’t. Their names were in the visitors’ book, and they passed through the hall whilst I was looking at it. They were there, and because they told you the tide wouldn’t be high until eleven you went walking on the beach and you were nearly drowned.’ And they knew who you were when they told you that, because they had just seen you write your name. You told me all about it when we were stuck up there on the cliff. They saw you write your name – Candida Sayle – and they remarked on it. And right on top of that they told you what a nice walk there was along the beach, and that the tide would not be high until eleven.’

The outer wall of Candida’s defence fell down with a crash. He knew too much, he remembered too well. She said on a quick breath,

‘It wasn’t Aunt Cara – I’m sure it wasn’t Aunt Cara.’

‘She was there when it was said.’

Candida tried to pull away her hands, but he held them.

‘She would think anything Aunt Olivia said was right. She is like that – you know she is.’

He nodded briefly.

‘All right, that goes for her. But it doesn’t go for Miss Olivia, does it? What was in her mind when she told you a lie about the tide?’

Candida said in a desperate voice,

‘She couldn’t have known that it was a lie.’

He let go of her and sat back.

‘Can you make yourself believe that? You can’t make me believe it.’

‘Stephen!’

‘I want you to leave Underhill.’

‘Stephen, I can’t.’

‘Why can’t you?’

‘I said I would stay and do this job with Derek.’

‘You can say you have got to go back and see about a job, or about your Aunt Barbara’s business, or anything that comes into your head.’

‘I won’t tell lies just because – just because – And there’s Aunt Cara – she’s got fond of me. Stephen, she’s pathetic. Olivia bullies her, and she’s grateful if anyone is kind.

He said in a masterful voice,

‘I want you to leave Underhill.’