Like the magician, Miss Atkins made no comment on this object, but offered Kate a seat on the settle, and began to take some cups and saucers off the huge scrubbed dresser. Miss Atkins was Chloe or Amaryllis of the dairy, grown old without her swain. Her long white apron and her neat shirt-blouse seemed positively to crackle with cleanliness as she moved about, and her crumpled face was as pink as if it had been scrubbed with a scrubbing-brush, like the silvery shelf of the dresser behind her. She was the first shy person Kate had met in this countryside. The remarks they made to one another expired one by one on the well-whitened flags until, glancing at the clock and approaching the range with the teapot, carefully skirting the sacred object under the cloth, Miss Atkins shot a glance sideways at Kate under her bristly grey eyebrows, and said in her low grating voice:
“You’re the lady who’s come to look for the little boy that’s missing, aren’t you? Miss Hughes told me.”
Before Kate could speak she went on, tipping the black-leaded kettle towards the teapot:
“Eh, there’s those that have children and doan’t value them, and there’s those that knoaws how to value them and hasn’t got them.”
“Did you know Sidney Brentwood, Miss Atkins?”
“Nay, it isn’t often a leaves th’house, and th’master doan’t often have people here,” said Miss Atkins, stirring the tea in the pot three times round and putting on the lid. She spoke gravely and hesitatingly in her low toneless voice, as though words were too precious to be poured out like boiling water. “But I heard about the boy, He was a good boy, they tell me. A nice-looking boy, too, big for his age.”
Her voice was as inexpressive as ever, but her meek pose as she stood with her hands crossed in front of her, with her stooped stiff neck, looking at the fire, expressed all that there was of a sort of wistful resignation.
“I wonder you don’t have one or two evacuees here, Miss Atkins, if you’re fond of children. They’d be company for you.”
“I did put down to have one,” said Miss Atkins, “but I didn’t get one. I reckon they thowt as we’re a bit far away here. I’d like it well enough.”
“If you had a boy with a bicycle, it would be all right. It’s not so far as all that,” said Kate. She was thinking of Ronnie Turner. An idea began to germinate in her mind. “Would Mr. Atkins mind having a boy here, if it turned out there were one wanting a billet?”
“Eh, he’d be willing enough, if it was a quiet boy,” said the little woman, putting her teapot under a cosy on the tray. “I could keep a boy easy on the billeting-money. The master’d have nowt to say against it.”
Any further discussion at the moment was stopped by the appearance of the master, followed by Aminta. When he saw Kate sitting by the fire he inquired with dry amiability: “That bike o’ yourn punctured yet?” He seated himself in the basket chair opposite.
“No. I carried it all the way down your awful lane, you see.”
“That’s a lie,” said Mr. Atkins genially, rubbing his large mauve hands together and holding them to the blaze. “I saw ye through th’ byre door, biking up alongside his lordship the stone-picker out yonder. Happen he’d like a cup o’ tea, too?”
“Happen he would,” replied Kate, “if the rations’ll run to it.
“Maisie can water the pot down, can’t you Maisie. Miss Hughes, lass, go and tell th’young man out yonder there’s a cup o’tea for him in her alongside his young laedy.”
“I’ll go,” offered Miss Atkins eagerly yet hesitatingly, as Aminta rose from her seat on the settle beside Kate. “You don’t want to go out there again, Miss Hughes, you want a rest, I know! You sit you down, love, by th’fire I lit for you.”
“No, really, I’ll go,” said Aminta, and went. She had spoken pleasantly but indifferently. Something in the look on Miss Atkins’s face as she glanced after Aminta’s sauntering figure, something baffled and sad, touched Kate, and also reminded her of Aminta’s mild complaint that Miss Atkins mothered her more than she cared for. If Miss Atkins, poor lonely creature, nourished maternal yearnings, it was hard luck on her that Aminta, of all the girls in the W.L.A., should have been deposited at her welcoming hearth!
“Lit the fire for her, did ye?” commented the brotherly Gideon. “I thowt as ye’d lit it to do the cooking, but I were wrong, maybe. Pour out the tea, woman, pour out the tea! There’s work to do about the plaece! Happen you’ve coom over to lend a hand wi’ it?” he added to Kate.
“No, I didn’t,” replied Kate, taking her cup of tea. “I came to see Aminta.”
“Eh, well, ye’re a bit laete, lass. We’re working people here, and milking’s at five,” said Mr. Atkins, helping himself to a large quantity of sugar. When Aminta and Colin entered, he inquired at once with a kind of attacking geniality whether Colin had counted his old stones and found them all in place? Colin replied gravely that he believed there was a small piece of mortar missing from above the west doorway.
“The whole damned thing’d be missing, if I had my way,” said Mr. Atkins, taking a long draught of tea and lingering over his moustache.
“I know,” replied Colin pleasantly. “That’s why I’m making a scale drawing of it. By the way—” he fished in his trouser pocket—“here’s to-day’s gate-money before I forget it.”
He handed a sixpenny bit to Mr. Atkins, who took it with a nod and laid it on the mantelpiece.
“I think I ought to have a season-ticket, really,” observed Colin. “Or anyway a workman’s ticket, if I come before breakfast.”
“Eh, ye can go hoame to your breakfast, lad, wi’out stumping up again,” said Mr. Atkins, who perhaps disliked Colin’s occupation more than he disliked Colin. “Ye can spend all day among them stones, and sleep on ’em, too, for owt I care. There’s no accounting for the taeste of you educated chaps.”
The redoubtable Gideon seemed in a mood this morning to be tolerant even of archaeologists. Kate decided to put his tolerance to the test.
“Mr. Atkins, if it’s really true that you’ve got a romantic underground passage here, why don’t you throw that open to the public, too?”
An indescribably wooden look came over Mr. Atkins’s round bristly face.
“Why doan’t I? Well, I doan’t because nobody in theer senses’d pay good money to see what’s oanly an old drain, young laedy.”
“Are you sure it’s only a drain, though? Have you looked?”
“I’ve looked as far as any man in his senses’d want to look. I haven’t knocked th’wall down, nor yet taeken the floor up.”
“Have you moved the grating?”
Mr. Atkins, pausing with his saucer halfway to his lips, gave her a quick, hostile look.
“What do you knoaw about th’grating?”
“Eh, Gideon, I was down cellar getting food for th’cats when the young laedy came in by th’dairy,” said Miss Atkins placably.
“Oh, were ye?” grunted her brother, as if he would have found fault, if he could, with this innocent occupation. “Well then, young laedy, I haven’t moved th’grating, and I doan’t intend to! And I’ll tell ye why I don’t intend to. There’s three reasons. One, there’s only an old draen, or maybe a ventilation shaft, t’other side o’ th’grating. Two, th’grating’s rusted and fixed in so firm it’d taeke dynamite to shift it. And three, I’m not going to give the run o’ my house to all and sundry to come gaeping about in it. And that’s flat. It’s bad enough to put up wi’ them gaeping about th’yards and buildings. But a man’s house is still his own, I reckon, even in these days!”
He spoke with a heat of resentment and a determination to keep his cellar inviolate that roused in Kate an answering heat of curiosity and an equal determination to make her way, by force, cunning or blandishment, into that close-kept cellar. She tried blandishment straight away.
“Would you let me look at it, Mr. Atkins, just once?”
He stared at her with a partly puzzled, partly hostile look in his sharp little eyes.
“What in thunder’s nae
me do ye want to look at it for?” he inquired. “There’s nobbut to see but an old rusted-in grating, with an old draen the other side, I tell ye.”
“But you say you haven’t looked, so how do you know? Oh, Mr. Atkins, I'm awfully interested in—”
But Kate had made a false step, she saw at once, in casting an aspersion on her host’s omniscience. Rising and putting down his cup with an indignant rattle, he said roughly:
“Eh, well, your interest mun be your master, my dear! I’ve no objection to you, and I’ve no objection to Miss Hughes having her friends here, wi’n reason! But I’ll not have her friends, nor anybody else, poking their noses round i’my house! Next thing’d be, yon smart Percy from the Veault’d be here again, talking the hind leg off a cow about his interest in old houses, and such flim-flam! He’s got an old house o’ his own, let him pull that to pieces and leave mine aloane! I’m fed up wi’ talk abut old houses and old ruins!” he went on, becoming more and more righteously wrathful at the sound of his own voice, and fixing Colin now, with an unloving eye. “I tell ye straight, mister, when I bought this plaece two years ago, it was my intention to pull down yon abbey, as they calls it, and build a fine new barn wi’ the stoanes. There’s a tidy lot o’ stoane out there, and it was that decided me to buy th’plaece. But I hadn’t been here six weeks when I was served wi’ a damned paper from th’ Government to say as I’d be liable to go to quod if I built a good barn out o’ yon damned useless ruin, even though it’s my own, bought and paid for! And I had to buy th’ stoane to build the barn I wanted, and leave all that clobbering mess standing in my yard, just to please the damned Government!”
“I know,” said Colin, apologising on behalf of the Government. “It’s hard lines on you, but—”
“But nowt! I can’t stop ye from waesting your time out in th’yard but I’ll stop ye from bringing your damn-headed nonsense inside my house! And if I ever find any of yer, or any of your smart-Percy friends nosing i’my cellar, I’ll—I’ll lock ye in, and ye’ll be welcome to crawl out by any underground passage ye can squirm into!” said the wrathful Gideon, and departed heavily from his fireside. Even in his wrath, he carefully skirted the covered crock which still nursed its secret before the fire.
Aminta rose, stretched herself and remarked:
“Well, I must measure up the milk and take it over to the Veault.”
“Do you do an early delivery there every day?”
“Yes, generally. They’ll be good customers later on, for all sorts of things.”
“And such an early delivery, too!”
“Oh, I don’t know! It’s getting on for half-past-six,” said the early-rising Aminta. “Rather late, for me. I’ll see you again soon, I expect, Kate.” She added: “You would have it my respected employer was meek and mild, you know, Katy. I told you he wasn’t, didn’t I?”
And with some satisfaction at her own unusual perspicacity, she strolled off towards the dairy.
Kate was beginning to think that Mr. Atkins was anything but meek and mild. She was determined to find her way again into that cellar, and with leisure, this time, to draw her own conclusions about the rusted-in grating and what lay the other side of it. She needed a collaborator. But Aminta, who had not in a year had sufficient curiosity even to go and look at the grating which was reputed to conceal an age-old subterranean passage, was scarcely the right partner for the enterprise.
“Miss Atkins,” said Kate, reverting to the idea which had occurred to her ten minutes ago, “if you would really like an evacuee here, there’s a boy in Hastry the school-master wants to find a new billet for. A nice boy, twelve years old—”
Miss Atkins was by nature inexpressive both in face and voice, but it seemed to Kate that her response to this suggestion was sincere. They decided that Kate should tackle the head-master, and that Miss Atkins should apply to the billeting officer, and that a little wire-pulling should soon remove Ronnie Turner from the barren land of the Cefn to the good pastures of Llanhalo.
“I’d like well enough to have a boy here. I could manage on the billet-money, and I like to see a boy eat,” said Miss Atkins simply. “I mun go and start on my bed-making now, but doan’t you hurry away. You bide here a bit by th’fire, you and your friend.”
When the kindly little woman had gone rattling away with her dustpan and brushes, Kate said to Colin:
“I wonder why Mr. Atkins is so keen not to let anybody see the cellar.”
“Just what he said, I should imagine. He’s an obstinate kind of chap whose home is his castle. And he’s got a grievance about the ruins—a fairly legitimate grievance, from his point of view.”
But Kate, whose mind was obsessed with hiding-places and the lost child who might be hidden in them, saw Gideon Atkins in a more sinister, if flickering and uncertain, light.
“I wonder if there is a secret passage here?”
“I dare say there was, even if there isn’t now. After all, this house is built on very ancient foundations.”
“And if there is a secret passage or the remains of one, what’s in it?”
“Just the usual things, I expect. Earth, and worms, and bits of broken stone, and insects. Don’t let your imagination trot away with you, Katy. I’ve excavated all sorts of sites, and I can assure you the usual things nearly always are in the usual places.”
‘‘A boy’s a usual thing, one would think, but this boy Sidney isn’t in the usual place.”
Colin said gently:
“I’m afraid he probably is in the usual place for little boys who’ve been missing a month, Kate.”
“Meaning heaven?”
Kate was not going to waste her energies quarrelling with Colin about this.
“I’ve been thinking, Colin, about what Mr. Davis said. It was a dark night when Sidney disappeared. A bad night to be out on, Mr. Davis said. Well, to-night was a lovely night to be out on—you could see for miles. I ought to have thought of that. If I want to do what he did, and have a chance of finding what he found, I ought to come out on the same sort of night. The dark’s different from the day, and dark nights are quite different from moonlight ones. You lose your way, perhaps. You mistake things for other things. You get frightened.”
“Look here, Kate, if you want to experiment again, let me know beforehand.”
“Why? So that you can jump out on me from behind a hedge?”
“Just because I’d rather you did. I know you wouldn’t let me come with you, or I’d suggest that. But I’d rather spend only one night wondering what you’re up to, instead of half-a-dozen.”
“All right, if I can, I will,” agreed Kate, standing up. “But as you’re not on the telephone, I may not be able to.”
“I’d better be getting back to my ruins, I suppose,” said Colin without much enthusiasm. “Miss Atkins’s dough is rising nicely, isn’t it? It’s making quite a hump in the cloth.”
“Oh, is that dough? I’ve been wondering what it was all the time!”
Colin smiled.
“What did you think it was, Kate?”
“I don’t know! It looked so mysterious sitting there all veiled, with everybody skirting round it.”
Colin lifted the cloth and revealed the whitish spongey mass.
“Not the Doom of Llanhalo, after all, you see! Just the usual thing in the usual place.”
Kate laughed, and went with him through the dairy to the yard. It was nearly light. The sky had that greenish tint of morning, and all the stars were gone.
“I think,” said Colin, “after all I’ll go back to Pentrewer and get a bite for breakfast, as Atkins has kindly given me a season ticket.”
“Colin, surely if you’re doing this job for the Office of Works you don’t have to keep doling sixpences out to old Gideon?”
Stooping over his bicycle and pinching a rather flabby tyre, Colin answered:
“I didn’t say I was doing this job for the Office of Works, did I? Dash. I must pump this tyre, or I’ll have a puncture.”
However, his manner somehow discouraged her from pursuing the subject further. And when he had blown his tyre hard, he changed the subject, or had forgotten it. They talked about London, and the theatre and Maiden Castle and the old days, most of the way back.
Chapter Thirteen
When she returned to Sunnybank, Kate found a letter from Sidney’s great-aunt awaiting her. Drinking her third lot of tea since midnight and eating the hearty breakfast of bacon and fried potatoes that was more welcome than usual after the exertions, Kate read the underlined, effusive little missive:
There May Be Danger Page 12