The Benevent Treasure

Chapter Fifteen

Candida went to bed, but it was some time before she put out her light. When she thought of putting it out there was an echo of what Nellie had said about the cold hand that had touched her face and the thing that went crying in the dark. It was frightfully stupid of course, but she had a horrid feeling that if she told her hand to go out and turn off the bedside light there would be some pretty dogged opposition. She went barefoot to the bookshelves which filled the whole of the recess between the fireplace and the window. If she were to read for a little, the pictures in her mind would change and she would be able to sleep.

She took down a book of verse and turned the pages. A couple of lines started to her eye:

‘Alone and warming his five wits,

The white owl in the belfry sits.’

That brought up a picture of cold moonlight and a frosted world. She remembered:

‘The owl for all his feathers was a-cold.’

Not just what she wanted at the moment. She turned the leaves, and saw four lines at the bottom of a page:

‘I saw their starved lips in the gloom,

With horrid warning gaped wide;

And I awoke, and found me here

On the cold hill-side.’

She clapped the book to and put it back upon the shelf. If all that Tennyson and Keats had got to offer were things about cold owls and horrid warnings, to say nothing of starved lips in the gloom, then they were definitely off.

She found a book of short stories and chanced upon one about a coral island. With a hot water-bottle at her feet and the glow of a reading-lamp at her left shoulder, it was possible to be transported to the tropics and to warm the imagination at a description of blue water, rainbow fish, and exotic blooms. After two or three stories all set amongst surroundings where the temperature never fell below eighty degrees she actually found the bottle too much and pushed it away. A little later on she was so nearly asleep that the book slipped from her hand. The sound that it made as it slid to the floor roused her just enough to make her reach out and turn off the light. She passed at once into one of those indeterminate dreams of which no real impression remains.

A long time afterwards she came back to the place where the dreams that come are remembered. She was in the midst of one, and there was no comfort in it. A wide moor and a blowing wind and the hour before the dawn. There were voices in the wind, but what they said went by. Only if she didn’t know what they were saying, how did she know that it was something that she must not, must not hear? In her dream she began to run so as to get away from the wind, but she tripped and fell, and the wind went over her and was gone.

It hadn’t been dark in the dream – just grey, and the clouds racing. But now when she opened her eyes it was very dark indeed. She was awake and in bed in her own room, and the room was full of darkness. She lay on her back, with the head of the bed against the wall, the door to the right, the windows to the left, and in the opposite wall the bulging chimney-breast and the recess which held the books. She knew where all these things were, but as far as seeing them they might just as well not have been there, except that the shape of the windows showed against the denser blackness of the wall. Outside and away from the hill the darkness would not be absolute. There would be at the very least the remembrance and the promise of light. But it couldn’t get into the house. It couldn’t get into the room, because the darkness filled it to the very brim.

Candida lay there in the dark and was afraid. Moments went by, each one more dragging than the last, and as they dragged, the fear weighed on her and held her down. She had only to put out her hand to the switch of the reading-lamp and turn it on and a golden light would fill the place. Darkness had no power against light. She had only to put out her hand. But she couldn’t move it from where it was clenched upon the other, hard up against the slow beating of her heart.

And then all of a sudden there was a sound and there was light.

The sound was the faintest in the world. Something moved. She could get no nearer to it than that. The sound came first, and afterwards the light – a thin white streak like a silver wire stretched upon the darkness of the recess.

Rows of black books in the shelves which she could not see and a line of light dividing them. Between one heart-beat and the next it came, and was gone. She heard the sound again, and this time she knew it for what it was – the bookshelves masked a door and someone was opening it. And quite suddenly the terror that froze her gave way to the instinct to shield her eyes from the searching light, to cover herself with the semblance of sleep. She turned with one quick movement and lay upon her side with her face turned into the pillow and the bedclothes caught up high about her head.

She was just in time, because the light was in the room. It was the light of a torch. She could see it between her lashes – just the glint of it where the bedclothes fell away and the pillow was pressed down. She could tell that it was a torch by the way it slid and swung. Someone had come through the wall in the recess. Someone was crossing the floor. Someone went out of the door and closed it softly.

Candida was not frightened any more, she was angry. There was someone who was playing tricks – on her, on Nellie. Nellie’s room was in the old part of the house too. Secret passages were useful in the seventeenth century. People were persecuted for their religion. There were wars and rumours of wars, conspiracies and plots. A turn of the wheel and you were up, and another turn and you were down. It would be useful to have somewhere to hide yourself or – your treasure. She wondered whether the Benevent Treasure was guarded by one of those secret doors. And she wondered who it was who had come soft-foot through the wall tonight. Nellie’s visitor could have been no one more frightening than poor Miss Cara, wandering in the dark of a dream, looking perhaps for the boy of whom she had been so dearly fond. But she didn’t think it was Miss Cara tonight, or if it was, then she wasn’t walking in her sleep. Mary Coppinger had walked in her sleep at school, but she didn’t need a torch to light her way. Candida had followed her once, and she had gone downstairs in the dark and into one of the classrooms, walking confidently and without hesitation where she herself had had to grope her way. By the time she caught Mary up there was just enough light from the row of windows to make out that she was sitting at her desk. She had the lid open, and she took out a book, and shut down the lid, and went back by the way that she had come. She didn’t remember anything about it in the morning. The book was under her pillow. It was a French grammar, and it turned out that she was worrying about an exam she was taking. Poor Aunt Cara was worried about something much worse than an exam.

But whatever had come through this room with a torch wasn’t walking in its sleep. It was when she was confronted with the word her in her own mind and found she couldn’t be sure it was the right one that she snatched at the non-committal it. Because she couldn’t be sure, she really couldn’t be sure, that it was a woman who had come out of the wall and gone away by the door. It could have been a man. Whichever it was had gone soft-foot and silent.

It could have been Joseph. When had she ever heard him come or go? He walked like a cat – an admirable thing in a butler, but not if he used it to prowl in secret passages and come drifting through one’s bedroom at dead of night. It was all in her mind in a flash, and in another she was out of bed and the door open under her hand. There was no light in the passage and no movement, but at the right-hand corner there was, not a glow, but some thinning of the darkness which made the corner visible.

On an angry impulse she ran barefoot down the passage. It turned left-handed and she looked round the turn. There was a faint glow which showed the next bend, and then quite suddenly it was gone. She went towards the place where it had been, her hands stretched out, her foot feeling before her. Even after a fortnight in the house its twists and turns could still play her a trick. There were steps that went up and steps that went down. There were cupboards that were nearly as large as rooms, and rooms that were as small as cupboards. It was easy enough to lose yourself at Underhill. And there were never any lights in the passages at night. One of Miss Olivia’s little economies.

The hand that was feeling before her came up against something which rose like a cliff. It barred her way, but it wasn’t a wall. Her fingers touched wood, the surface deeply carved. At once she knew where she was. There was a big carved press at the top of the stairway which led from the hall. It was old and black, and most inconveniently placed. The landing was narrow, and the press jutted out and cramped what space there was. There was a choice of three passages here, the one by which she had come, one that went on to the servants’ wing, and a wider one which led to Miss Olivia’s room and Miss Cara’s – twin rooms side by side with a bathroom in between. If it was Joseph whom she had been following, he must be well away – the whole wing was cut off by a connecting door. She skirted the press and looked towards it. There was neither light nor movement. Useless to go any farther. The anger had gone out of her. She went a little way in the direction of the Miss Benevents’ rooms. The passage lay dark before her – dark and still. And all at once it came over her that her chance was gone, and here she was in her nightgown a long way from where she had any business to be. She had a horrifying picture of Miss Olivia opening her door and switching on the light. Just what she would say or do was one of those things that don’t bear thinking about. And she wasn’t going to think about it, because it wasn’t going to happen.

She turned, keeping wide of the stairs. Her feet were cold on the carpet and a shiver went down her back. When she had passed another corner she felt for a switch and put on the light. She would have to come back and turn it off, but it would show her the way to her room, and once that was lighted she couldn’t lose herself.

When it was all done and she had locked her door, she pushed a chair against the bookshelves in the recess and got back into bed. It was twenty past three, and the hot water-bottle was still faintly warm. As she looked across at the chair she remembered the proverb about locking the stable door after the steed is stolen. She called in another proverb to rout it – ‘Better late than never.’