Aminta stopped making soothing noises to her cow and rose to her feet.
“That’s the lot, I think,” she said, putting the frothing pail down on the cobbles and removing the ancient man’s cap she had been wearing. “Tulip’s a nuisance just at present. She’s got twins and she tries to save up milk for them.”
Hooking her two buckets on to an iron hoop, she stepped into the middle of it, lifted it, and with this simple safeguard against splashed milk, led the way across the yard to the dairy.
The house itself might have a prim Victorian look, but the cavernous dairy, when they entered it out of the sunlight of the yard, reminded Kate of a mediaeval dungeon. They had to descend a few steps into it, for its stone-flagged floor was below ground-level, and the vaulted, rather low stone ceiling, gave the impression of a place quite sunk below the earth, although the walls were whitewashed to reflect what light there was. The scrubbed wide shelves that ran around the stone walls, carrying flat bowls of milk, dishes with remnants of cooked food, cheeses and other such harmless and even attractive objects, looked out of place.
Aminta put down her milk-pails with a sound like the clanking of prisoners’ chains.
“I always thought,” said Kate, looking around her, “that a dairy was a light, sunny place where pink-cheeked maidens, mostly called Chloe or Amaryllis, sang songs about their swains while they swung the churns.”
“You try singing a song while you swing the churn, my child! And if the dairy was sunny, everything would go off in the hot weather. Still, I admit most of the dairies I’ve been into are a bit more cheerful than this,” said Aminta, taking a strainer and a couple of milk-cans down from nails on the wall.
At the darker side of the room, the vaulted ceiling broke in a low stone archway, with a short barrel-roofed passage beyond, which ended in a heavily-nailed door. A variety of things, including oil-drums, old brooms, mole-traps, wooden trestles, beer-barrels, and what might have been the original butt of Malmsey that drowned the Duke of Clarence, stood in this doorway.
“Where does the door at the end of that passage lead to?” asked Kate.
Aminta glanced up.
“To a cellar.”
Kate’s interest, already roused by these ancient quarters and the menacing and dungeon-like aspect of the old door, sharpened.
“What, the one where there’s a secret passage?”
Aminta laughed.
“Who’s been pulling your leg about a secret passage?”
“The Davises of Pentrewer, who drove me up from the station, said there was supposed to be—”
“Yes, there is supposed to be the beginning of some tunnel or other, miles long, that pops up goodness knows where— Wigmore Castle or Aberystwyth or the Garden of Eden—you know the kind of thing! Most old houses with cellars are supposed to have secret passages, aren’t they?” said Aminta, busy over her milk-strainer.
“You mean there isn’t the vestige of such a thing here?”
“I don’t know, I’m sure,” said Aminta indifferently. “Old Gid says there isn’t, and he should know. I’ve never been in the cellar.”
Such incuriousness seemed to Kate excessive, even for Aminta.
“You’ve been a whole year in a house that’s supposed to have a secret passage leading out of the cellar, and you’ve never even looked in the cellar to see if there’s a trap door or anything?”
“Well, I’m generally rather busy doing other things. And as a matter of fact, the cellar door’s always kept locked, so I wouldn’t be able to look around there, even if I wanted to.”
“Kept locked! Why?”
“Oh, well, sightseers used to come sometimes and want to look round it. It’s part of the old foundations of the Abbey, you see. And Gid hates sightseers, and small blame to him. It’s bad enough to have them crawling round the yard in the summer, without letting them into the house. And when the Morrisons first came to the Veault, Mr. Morrison annoyed old Gid rather by coming and enthusing about this imaginary secret passage and wanting permission to search for it—he’s an American, awfully nice, but rather enthusiastic—and Gid got very cross about it. And one day he found Mr. Morrison in the cellar looking round, and suspected him of having designs on some old rusted-in grating that Gid says leads to an old drain, if it leads to anything at all. And there was a great row, and Gid’s kept the door locked ever since. He threatened to have the cellar filled in, but he hasn’t done it yet, and I should think he’d had too much sense to waste money on such a thing. But gosh he was cross! Old Gid’s home is his castle, and nobody’s allowed to forget it!”
“Sounds a bit of a dog-in-the-manger to me.”
“Oh, I don’t know, Katy! A historic ruin is a trial to its owner, you know. Anybody that wants to come and gape at old stones seems to think it’s your duty to leave off work and show them round. Mr. Atkins makes them pay sixpence each to come in the yard and walk round the refectory and cloister ruins, and won’t have them in the house at any price. That keeps them off a bit,” said Aminta, with satisfaction.
But Kate’s sympathies were with Mr. Morrison, locked out from the promising beginning of an adventure with a secret passage. Secret passages, were, she imagined, mostly figments of the popular imagination: but even the flimsiest rumour of a secret passage must invest an ancient cellar with a peculiar fascination, and she thought it very uncivilised of Aminta’s employer to deny a harmless amateur archaeologist his bit of fun.
“I’ve heard a lot about your Mr. Atkins in Hastry,” said she. “What’s he like, Aminta?”
“Oh, all right,” replied Aminta. It was her invariable reply to inquiries of this sort.
“Shall I see him?”
“I wonder you didn’t see him as you came in. He was hedging up by the gate half-an-hour ago.”
“What? Do you mean to say that was him?”
“I expect so.”
“That tubby quiet little man? With eye-glasses?”
“Yes, I believe so,” said Ami looking a bit vague, as though a year were hardly long enough for her to have noticed whether her employer wore eye-glasses or not.
“Well, I’m blowed!” muttered Kate, trying to reconcile the reality of Mr. Gideon Atkins’ unobtrusive and rotund personality with what she had heard of him.
“Why?”
“So meek and mild! I thought he was a much more terrifying kind of chap.”
“He can be, when he likes,” said Aminta, on a slightly defensive note, as though she felt it her duty to protect her employer’s reputation from the charge of meekness. “You ought to have heard him an hour ago ordering the gipsies off the farm!”
“I wish I had! I like people to live up to their reputations.”
“Didn’t know old Gid had got one,” said Aminta, straining some milk out of her bucket into a couple of tall milk-cans.
“You ought to hear Mr. Gwyn Lupton rhapsodising about him, then.”
Aminta muttered:
“Oh, him!”
“Why ‘Oh, him’? I fell for Gwyn Lupton, personally.”
“I daresay, but then it’s your part of job to listen to people talking,” said Aminta, acutely for her. “You wouldn’t fall if you had him working for you. Nobody gets any work done when Gwyn Lupton’s about. He was here a couple of days last week putting up a gate, and nobody could get past him in less than twenty minutes. In the end, I just took to pretending he wasn’t there and walking straight through without even saying ‘Hullo’, leaving him talking to his mallet, if he liked. Even old Gid doesn’t know how to shut him up. And most people are like you, and don’t even want to.”
“I wonder anybody employs him, then!”
“Oh, he gets through quite a lot of work himself. It’s other people’s work he lays a blight on. At the Veault, Mr. Morrison used to think out most carefully how he could keep Lupton and the other men doing jobs in quite different parts of the house. But it turned out just as bad as letting them work together, because the other men kept finding excuses to
visit him to borrow tools or take him cans of tea. People round here like listening to other people talk, I believe.”
“I travelled up in the train from Llanfyn with a children’s nurse who said she was going to the Veault.”
“Oh yes, Rosaleen told me they were expecting one.”
“Rosaleen?”
“Rosaleen Morrison. She’s awfully nice. I’m going over to the Veault now with this milk. You can come if you like. When the children arrive there, I shall have to take a pony and cart over with the milk and stuff, I suppose. They’ll be wanting about five gallons a day.”
“When are the children coming?”
“As soon as the house is ready for them, you know what builders are. I think Mrs. Morrison expected the creche’d be in full swing long before this, but now they seem to think it’ll be another three weeks at least.”
“Isn’t it rather odd to engage a nurse such a long time before the children come?”
But speculations upon the oddities of her friends’ behaviour did not interest Aminta, who merely replied:
“We’ll go through the fields, it’s quicker than by road. You’ll like Rosaleen, Kate. She’s an awfully decent sort.”
“I suppose they’d engaged her already, and didn’t like to put her off,” said Kate, answering her own question.
It was like dear old Aminta, reflected Kate, to be strolling through a field in Radnorshire with a friend she had supposed, until half-an-hour ago, to be in Highgate, without evincing the slightest curiosity as to what had brought her here. Kate was introduced to the calves, who tossed their heads and their tails and cavorted away, to the flock of ewes, who promptly turned their backs and see-sawed off down the hill as one ewe, and to a couple of enormous and far too affectionate carthorses who inspired Kate with a strong hidden desire to imitate the ewes and flee. As they took the footpath through the woods, Kate inquired:
“Have you ever heard of Sidney Brentwood, Aminta?”
“The evacuee boy who disappeared? Yes, of course I heard of him. Why?”
“I came to look for him.”
“Oh, did you? Well, you’re a bit late off the mark, aren’t you, Katy? That was weeks ago. Rosaleen and I joined the search-parties several evenings.”
“What happened?”
“Oh, it was dismal, really. Such enormous hills, such a lot of bracken, it gave you a hopeless kind of feeling before you started. And also you couldn’t help knowing the kid would probably be dead, if you did find him, which made it seem more dismal still. At least, it did me. Rosaleen was marvellous. She never says die about anything. You’ll like her, Kate,” said Aminta with enthusiasm.
“Shall I? What do you think happened to Sidney Brentwood, then?”
“Accident,” said Aminta briefly.
“If he had an accident, still, he must be somewhere.”
“Yes, somewhere nobody’s been yet,” said Aminta. “Sooner or later somebody’ll go there, and then he’ll be found—poor kid! Radnorshire’s the thinnest-populated county in England and Wales, did you know that?’’
“I didn’t, but I can well believe it. What’s all this barbed wire for?” asked Kate, as Aminta removed a hurdle and they dived under an unsightly wire barricade out of the wood into an open field.
“Fox-hunters,” said Aminta, picking up her cans. “Old Gid hates them worse than poachers, and that’s saying a lot.”
Kate was a little startled at a view of fox-hunters which classed them with poachers. Her own sentiments about foxhunting were the usual urban mixture of pleasure in a picturesque procession combined with an uneasy dislike of blood-sports.
“Mr. Atkins wrote and told them what he’d done, so it’s up to them to keep away,” said Aminta. “Why should we put up with people trespassing about the place, leaving gates open and breaking hedges down, looking for foxes and ruins and so on?”
“Well, you don’t get many people looking for ruins nowadays, I should imagine! Most of us are beginning to get sick of them!”
“No. Though there was a man around here yesterday, wanting permission to make plans of the ruins, who seemed to think we ought to put him up for the week while he did it. Old Gid said he wasn’t going to give house-room to ruin-fanciers, but the young man could go and stay somewhere else and come and draw the ruins at sixpence a time, if he liked. So off he went. He was here doing some drawings this morning. Miss Atkins wanted to let him have a room—she’s always complaining she doesn’t get enough company, poor old thing.”
“What’s Miss Atkins like?”
“All right,” said Aminta, as usual. Miss Atkins, however, had evidently made some impression on her genial indifference, for she added: “She mothers me rather a lot, which I hate.”
They passed through a gate into a sloping field, and Kate saw beyond the dip a cluster of old stone roofs under a protecting huddle of great trees.
“There’s the Veault,” said Aminta. “It’s about a thousand times better worth looking at than Llanhalo, but nobody ever comes gaping round here, I suppose because it’s not a ruin. I hope Rosaleen’s in, Kate. You’ll like her.”
Chapter Seven
The Veault certainly bore little resemblance to Llanhalo, and was infinitely more picturesque. It was a Tudor period timber-built house, looking across the valley, sheltered at its back by the slope of the land, its farm-buildings, and big trees. In contrast with Llanhalo’s curious mixture of Victorian primness and mediaeval gloom, it bore a sunny, tranquil and benevolent look, with the sun gleaming on its ridge-tiles and twinkling on its square-paned casements, and blue smoke rising from a great stone chimney-stack that terminated in shafts of the most delicate brickwork.
There was scaffolding around the chimney-stack in the cobbled back court across which Aminta and Kate were clattering, and a heap of builder’s sand, planks and buckets testified to repairs still being carried out. The house had evidently recently been re-tarred and re-lime-washed, for the magpie effect for which west country houses are famous, was positively startling in its contrasts of black and white.
“I say,” exclaimed Kate, as they crossed the yard towards a door which stood open on a cool stone passage. “What a stage-setting, Aminta!”
“Nice place for kids, anyway,” said Aminta, who was not interested in stage-settings. She knocked casually on the open door, and led the way into a large stone-flagged kitchen, where the sunlight fell picturesquely through a large window over a girl in a yellow jumper and green cord slacks who was setting out cups and saucers on a silver tray.
“Ah, here’s the milk!” cried the girl joyfully, looking up. She had a very fresh and attractive voice, with a slight American accent. “I was never more delighted to see anyone in my life, Aminta! Aunt Ellida gave the last drop of yesterday’s to the builders for their morning tea, and we’re quite out.”
“Whatever time of the day I come here, you’re making tea, it seems to me,” observed Aminta, putting her cans down on the table.
“Maud!” called the girl, raising her pretty voice and directing it towards a narrow stone passage that seemed to lead towards the scullery. “Bring two more cups, will you?” She smiled delightfully at Kate. “Aminta, I suppose it’s a secret who your friend is?”
Aminta in her leisurely way introduced Kate to Rosaleen Morrison. Maud, who at that moment appeared in the doorway with a tea-canister and two cups-and-saucers in her hands, Kate recognised as the tall children’s nurse who had been her travelling companion. They exchanged genial greetings.
“Shall I take the tray, into the hall, dear?” said Maud.
“I expect that’s where you’ll find Aunt Ellida,” replied Rosaleen. “I’m afraid you’ll find Major Everyman there, too.”
“Major Everyman?” inquired Aminta. “Who’s he?”
“Major Humphries. We call him that because he never utters an original thought. He won’t stay long, though. He’s got to go and say a few clichés to the Home Guard at five o’clock. You‘ll stay for a cup, won’t you, Ami
nta?”
“Sorry, I’m afraid I can’t. I’ve got the cows to feed. In fact, Rosaleen, I must be off, if you’ll just tip out your milk and let me take the cans.”
“Oh come, Aminta honey, don’t be so darned virtuous!
“Can’t help it, Rosa, I was made that way. You can give Kate a cup of tea, if you don’t mind. She wants to see the house. Mind she doesn’t cut you out with Gwyn Lupton, though, she s fallen for him. See you later, Kate,” said Aminta casually, and left.
“Isn’t she lovely, your Aminta?” asked Rosaleen. “I think I’d have just died of ennui here, if it hadn’t been for her!
“Have you been here long?”
“Seven long weary weeks. I had a wire from Auntie saying ‘Children coming next week,’ so I packed my grip and caught the first train for the west. And here we are, seven weeks later, kicking the builder’s pants for all we’re worth, and still we’ve only just got the baths fitted. Aren’t your builders in England just dilatory, Miss Mayhew? It’s quite fascinating the way they go on! What an English builder doesn’t know about shattering folks’ hope of a home to live in, is just nobody’s business!”
Rosaleen smiled straight up into Kate’s eyes. Our sympathies do not always respond obediently to the recommendations of our friends. But Kate was quite disposed in this case to oblige Aminta, and like Rosaleen Morrison. She had a free and friendly manner that reminded Kate of the young actresses she was so used to. And, now that Kate came to look at her, there was something about her appearance, too—the well-fitting but exotically-coloured slacks, the small soft hands, the sleek, careless wave of brown hair drooping like a child’s lock down her cheek, the grand incongruousness, in these country surroundings, of the blue eye-shadow upon her upper lids— which made Kate feel quite at home with her. Nurse Maud, Kate had noticed, also indulged in much more make-up than was usual in children’s nurses, but her make-up was a simple and heavy-handed affair of lipstick, rouge and face-cream. Rosaleen’s was that of an expert in beauty.
There May Be Danger Page 6