“I think I’ll have this red,” announced Allegra. “I suppose you’ll have the blue.”
I sat down with them and studied the dresses and we talked of the kind of material which would suit them best.
I met Godfrey in the graveyard by the Stacy tomb. I had never felt quite the same sense of privacy here since the gypsy woman had risen out of the grass and ever after had always had a special feeling of being overlooked in this place. In fact, since the fire I had had many uneasy moments when I was in isolated places. It was a natural reaction in view of my doubts and suspicions.
Godfrey was coming towards me. He was certainly pleasant to look at and I immediately thought of Gentleman Terrall. How absurd! That frivolous conversation of the girls had made me picture the escaped homicidal maniac as Godfrey.
He now seemed a little thoughtful.
“Hello,” I said. “Has anything happened?”
“Happened? What did you think?”
“It is just that you seem unusually pensive.”
“I’ve been down to the site. Those mosaics are very interesting ... that pattern running through. I can’t make out what it is, though.”
“But just a pattern!”
“Well, one never knows. It might lead to some fresh light on the Romans.”
“I see.”
“Don’t sound so disappointed. It is interesting ... really. Do go and look at it. Of course the stone is so discolored that you can’t see the pattern, but I can make out the similarity all over the pavement and in the baths.”
“I haven’t been there since...”
“No? Naturally you’d feel reluctant. But I was thinking of Roma.”
“In what way?”
“Suppose she’d found something there ... some glimmer of a notion and she told it to someone who wanted to develop an idea...”
“You are still harping on the theory of the jealous archaeologist.”
“Surely one should never discard a theory until it’s proved wrong.”
“But it wouldn’t explain Edith’s disappearance.”
“You’ve linked the two disappearances firmly in your mind. It may be you’re wrong there.”
“But the coincidence!”
“Coincidences do occur now and then.”
“I wonder if Roma ever came here ... to this graveyard,” I said irrelevantly.
“Why should she? There’s nothing of archaeological interest here.”
I looked over my shoulder.
“You’re nervous today. Why?”
“I just have an uneasy feeling of being watched.”
“There’s no one here but the dead.” He took my hand and held it firmly. “There’s nothing to be afraid of, Caroline.” And his smile meant: There never will be while I’m there to take care of our lives. And I thought how right he was; and I saw clearly that future of which I had thought now and then: the peace, the security, which I was not sure that I wanted.
Perhaps he was not completely sure either. He would never be impulsive. He would give our friendship a chance to develop; he would never force anything. That was why when he made his decision it would be the right one ... from his point of view.
I said: “I’ll go along some time and look at the motifs.”
“Yes, do.”
We came through the graveyard towards the lych-gate and as we did so Mrs. Rendall was standing there. She looked baleful like the avenging angel until she smiled sweetly at Godfrey. She ignored me.
I left them together.
I walked beside the baths and it seemed as though Roma was with me for I was seeing her so clearly. How excited she had been when she had shown me these!
I did not want to look in the direction of the burned-out cottage but I could not prevent my eyes straying there. How eerie it looked—a blackened shell like the chapel in the copse.
Roma seemed very close to me that day. I almost felt that she was trying to tell me something. Danger was very close to me. I could sense it all about me. I tried to shrug off the feeling, but I had been foolish to come here. It was too close to the scene of my terrifying experience. The place was too lonely and there were too many ghosts from the past.
Pull yourself together, I scolded myself. Don’t be so absurdly fanciful. Look at the mosaics and see if you can pick out this pattern.
The color was dingy. Centuries of grime had made it so. Dear Roma, how she had tried to give me an interest in life when Pietro had died and because she had believed that archaeology could provide the panacea for all troubles she had set me fetching and carrying for those who were piecing the mosaic together. Of course the picture on the mosaic would be part of the pattern about which Godfrey was so interested.
I felt as though Roma were applauding me. I had helped work on that mosaic. I must tell Godfrey about this at the earliest possible moment.
I went straight back to the vicarage.
I had to find some way of letting him know I was there and by good luck one of the frightened little maids was polishing the brass knocker so I did not have to knock.
“Mrs. Rendall is in the still room,” she volunteered.
“It’s all right, Jane,” I said, “I just want to go up to the schoolroom. I’ve left some music.”
I went upstairs, where Godfrey was giving a lesson in Latin. He was alert as soon as he saw me.
The girls looked at me in surprise. I knew they missed very little.
“I’ve left some music, I think,” I said, and went across the room to the drawer where I kept a book of elementary studies.
“Can I help you?” Godfrey was beside me, his back to the girls.
I fumbled with the book and taking a pencil wrote on it: “Graveyard in ten minutes.”
“Is that what you’re looking for?” asked Godfrey.
“Yes, I’m sorry to have interrupted the lesson. Only I did need this.”
I went out of the schoolroom, aware of their eyes following me. Down through the hall, quickly, lest Mrs. Rendall emerge from the still room, and out to the graveyard to wait.
In less than ten minutes Godfrey was with me.
“Perhaps I’m being overdramatic,” I said, “but I’ve remembered something. When I came here and stayed a few days with Roma, they were piecing the mosaic together. It was too precious to move, Roma said, and she had some of her people working on it. I was supposed to be helping ... doing nothing important, of course, but it was to give me an interest.”
“Yes, yes,” he said, dispelling all my doubts that what I was telling him was important.
“Well, that mosaic was a part of this pattern, I believe. In fact I’m almost sure of it.”
“We’ll have to look at it,” he said.
“Where is it?”
“If any piecing together was successful it would be in the British Museum. We must take the first opportunity of looking at it.”
“When can you go?”
“There’d be comment if I took a day off at the moment. What about you? You’ve been here some time and haven’t had a day off have you?”
“No, but...”
“I shan’t rest until one of us goes.”
“I believe Mrs. Lincroft is taking the girls to London to buy dress material some time soon.”
“There’s your opportunity. You go up with them and while they buy material you go into the Museum and see if you can find that mosaic.”
“All right,” I said. “If I get the opportunity before you do, I’ll go.”
“We’re getting somewhere,” said Godfrey, his eyes gleaming with excitement. He returned to the schoolroom and I hurried back to Lovat Stacy where I met Mrs. Lincroft in the hall. She said: “You’re later than usual.”
“Yes. I had to go back for this.” I flourished the book and it slipped from my fingers. She picked it up for me and I was aware of “Graveyard ten minutes” written on the cover. I wondered if she had seen it.
The girls were excited as we traveled up on the train.
; “What a pity,” said Alice, “that Sylvia couldn’t come.”
“She would never be allowed to choose her own material,” put in Allegra.
“Poor Sylvia! I feel sorry for her,” said Mrs. Lincroft; and she sighed. I knew she was thinking of the births of Alice and Allegra—highly dramatic and unorthodox both of them; and yet she had managed to give them a happier home than Sylvia’s conventional one. I thought of her remark about the slippery stone and I thought: That woman has done everything she can to make up for her lapse.
“Poor Mrs. Verlaine,” went on Alice. “She isn’t going to buy material for a new dress.”
“Perhaps she is,” said Mrs. Lincroft.
“She is going to the British Museum” added Allegra, eying me with speculation. I felt vaguely uncomfortable because I had not told them I was going to the British Museum. “I heard you say so to Mr. Wilmot, Mrs. Verlaine,” added Allegra.
“Oh,” I stammered, caught off my guard. “I thought I’d look in there. I used to live near and go in quite a lot.”
“Because your father was a professor,” went on Alice. “I expect he made you work very hard which is why you are so good at the piano.” She looked at Allegra who said: “I should like to go to the British Museum. Let’s all go.”
I was so dismayed that I could find nothing to say for a few seconds. Then I said: “I thought you were all eager to choose your new materials.”
“There’s always plenty of time, isn’t there, Mamma?” put in Alice eagerly, “sometimes we go into the Park. But I’d rather go to the British Museum.”
Mrs. Lincroft said: “I don’t see why you shouldn’t have an hour or so there. When did you propose to go, Mrs. Verlaine?”
“Oh please, I don’t want to force this on you.”
“It can scarcely be said to be forced,” she replied with a smile. “I tell you what we’ll do. We’ll go straight to the Museum and then we’ll have luncheon at Brown’s Hotel and afterwards choose the material and catch the four-thirty train home.”
Thus was my frustration complete but there was worse to come. While I sat back in my seat watching the fields and hedges skim by I was trying to think of some way of diverting their desires from the British Museum, but I dared not seem too disturbed. How had Allegra overheard my talk with Godfrey? We must have been careless.
At length I realized that there was nothing to be done but take them along with me to the Museum, where I must try to lose them and find my way to the Roman section alone.
Luck was against me that day. We had alighted from the cab which took us from the Station to the Museum when a voice called me by name.
“Why ... surely... yes it is... Mrs. Verlaine.”
Fortunately I was a little ahead of my companions so I moved quickly towards the speaker whom I recognized immediately as a colleague of my father’s.
“A bad business that of your sister,” he said, shaking his head. “What was it all about?”
“We ... we never discovered.”
“A great loss,” he said. “We always used to say that Roma Brandon would go even farther than your parents. Poor Roma...”
How resonant was his voice. Mrs. Lincroft was near enough to have heard every word, but the children did not seem to be listening. Alice was standing with her back towards me pointing out something on the road to Allegra.
But Mrs. Lincroft must have heard.
“You must look us up sometime. Same address.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Thanks.”
He had lifted his hat, bowed and moved off.
Mrs. Lincroft said: “I’ve never been in this place before. We don’t take advantage of our museum, do we?”
My heart was beating fast. Perhaps she had not heard. Perhaps I had imagined that his voice was unusually resonant. She had not been so close as I thought her and her mind was on the material for the girls’ dresses.
“No,” I said and there was a nervous laugh in my voice. “We don’t really.”
“We are taking advantage now.” Alice had come up with Allegra. “How solemn it all is! How important!”
They walked beside me exclaiming as they went. I thought of the old days when I had come here so frequently, when my parents had believed that the greatest treat any child could enjoy was within these walls.
I had escaped them. I had left them all poring over an illuminated manuscript dating back to the twelfth century while I sped silently over those stone floors and here I was where I had been so many times with Roma.
I asked one of the guides where I could find any of the Roman relics from the Lovat Stacy site and I was directed immediately.
To my great joy it was there among other relics. The very mosaic which was so like that broken and battered one Godfrey and I had examined with such care. There was more than one. I had not known of this. Roma had only mentioned one, but perhaps she was so successful with it that she had attempted some sort of restoration of others. In the case with the mosaics was a printed notice describing them and the process used in the reconditioning. The first of them showed a figure—probably a man—who appeared to be without feet, for he stood on a pair of stumps which I realized were meant to be legs. His arms were stretched out as though he were attempting to catch at something which was not there. I looked at the second mosaic. The pictures were less vivid on this one and there were gaps in the scene which had been filled in with some sort of cement; but this was a picture of a man whose legs were cut off to the knee. I realized then that he was standing in something; and in the final one only the man’s head was visible and he had clearly been buried alive.
I could not take my eyes from them.
“Why, they’re ours,” said a voice at my elbow. I turned. Allegra and Alice were standing on either side of me.
“Yes,” I said, “they were discovered on the site near Lovat Stacy.”
“Oh, but that makes them so very interesting doesn’t it?” said Alice.
Mrs. Lincroft was coming towards us.
“Look, Mamma,” said Alice. “Look what Mrs. Verlaine has found.”
Mrs. Lincroft studied the mosaics with what appeared to be a cursory interest. “Very nice,” she said.
“But you haven’t looked,” protested Allegra. “They’re ours.”
“What?” Mrs. Lincroft looked closely. “Well, fancy that!” She smiled at me apologetically. “Now I really do think we must think about getting luncheon.”
I agreed. My mission was accomplished, though I was not sure how successfully. But I should have a great deal to tell Godfrey.
We made our way from the Museum and took a cab to Brown’s while the girls chattered about what they would eat and what material they would choose.
When we came out the news boys were shouting excitedly. “Gentleman Terrall captured. Madam safe.”
“That’s our Gentleman Terrall,” said Alice.
“What do you mean ... ours?” asked Mrs. Lincroft sharply.
“We were talking about him, Mamma. We said he must be a little like Mr. Wilmot.”
“Whatever made you say that?”
“Because he was a gentleman. We thought he’d look exactly like Mr. Wilmot, didn’t we, Allegra?”
Allegra nodded.
“You shouldn’t think about such things.” Mrs. Lincroft sounded quite cross and Alice was subdued.
No one mentioned the mosaics. More comforting still, none of them showed that they had overheard that conversation outside the Museum. My confidence began to return and by the time we had bought the material and were ready to return home I was convinced that my identity was still a secret.
Godfrey was excited about my discovery in the Museum.
“I’m certain it means something,” he declared.
We had walked along beside the three baths and he stooped to peer at the mosaic as though he felt that if he looked long enough he would discover some meaning there.
“Don’t you think they would have found out if it did?” I asked.
“Well, what do you propose to do? Go to the British Museum and lay this information before the powers that be?”
“They’d probably laugh at me.”
“You mean because they didn’t discover it. Here is another version of the jealous archaeological theory. It’s fascinating, but it hasn’t brought the solution of Roma’s disappearance any nearer.”
I heard a little warning cough and turning saw the three girls coming towards us.
“We’ve come to see the mosaics,” announced Alice. “We saw them in the Museum, you know. Mrs. Verlaine showed us.”
“I liked the one with just the head showing, said Allegra. “It looked as if they’d chopped off his head and put it on the ground. It was gruesome, that one.”
“It made me feel sick,” commented Alice.
Godfrey straightened up and gazed towards the sea.
I guessed he wanted to change the subject for he said: “How clear it is. They say that means rain.”
“It does,” agreed Allegra. “When you can see the masts on the Goodwins it often means rain.”
Godfrey caught his breath; he seemed to have forgotten the presence of the girls. “It’s just struck me,” he said. “These mosaics ... they’re meant to portray someone being buried alive.”
“You mean sinking in quicksand?”
Godfrey looked inspired. “It was a sort of warning probably. As a punishment they took people out to the Goodwins so that they could gradually sink.”
“That wouldn’t be possible, would it?” I asked.
He looked disappointed. “Hardly. There might have been other sands.”
“Where?”
“Somewhere.” He waved his hand vaguely. “But I’m sure that’s what it means.”
“I think that’s ... horrible,” said Sylvia with a shudder. “Fancy being...”
Godfrey stood rocking on his heels, entranced. I don’t think I had ever seen him really excited before.
“Don’t be a baby, Sylvia,” chided Allegra.
“We mustn’t keep Miss Clent waiting,” said Alice. Then to me: “Miss Clent is going to fit our dresses this morning.”
The Shivering Sands Page 32