She was closing the door behind her. In a flimsy nightgown and barefoot, she stole across the floor as if she knew which boards might creak and could avoid them.
“I didn’t mean to come,” she said in a musing voice, as though puzzled at herself. “Not yet, at any rate. Not until tomorrow when it’s over. But I couldn’t stop myself. Do you feel something changing, Ernest?”
The match burned his fingers. By touch she prevented him from lighting another, and guided the box back to the table. He heard it rattle as it fell. Something else fell too, with a faint swishing sound, and she was beside him, arms and legs entwined with his.
“Do you feel something changing?” she insisted.
“I feel as though the whole world is changing!”
“Perhaps it is. But not for the worse. Not now, at any rate … Oh, my beloved! Welcome back from hell!”
Her hands were tugging at his pyjamas, and in a moment there was nothing but the taste and scent of love, and its pressure, and delight.
“If …” he said later, into darkness.
Understanding him at once, she interrupted. “So what? You’re going to marry me, I hope.”
“Of course. Even so—”
She closed his lips with a finger. “Remember this is a part of the world where the old ways endure. Did anyone you met here condemn Mrs. Gibson, for example?”
“Just my aunt.”
. “Did anybody tell you how soon after the wedding Mrs. Gibson bore her first?”
“Ah—no!”
“It must have been conceived last time the seventh year came round. They didn’t marry until he got his call-up papers, though they were long engaged. The second followed one of his leaves, and you know about the third. They take it as natural. Some may think ill of us. I won’t. Nor they.”
“I won’t think ill of you! Ever!” He sealed the promise with a frantic kiss.
“Even if I steal away now?”
“Alice darling—”
“I cannot be found here in the morning, can I? No matter how tolerant Grandfather is! No, you must let me go.” She was suiting action to word, sliding out of bed, donning her nightgown again. “We have a lifetime before us. Let’s not squander it in advance.”
“You’re right,” he sighed. “I wish I had half your sense.”
“And I wish I had half the presence of mind you showed when Mrs. Gibson’s fire broke out. Between us”—she bent to bestow a final kiss on his forehead—“we should make quite a team … What was that?”
The air had been rent by a scream: faint, distant, but unbelievably shrill, like the cry of a damned soul.
Sitting up, Ernest snatched at a possibility.
“It sounded like a stuck pig! Mr. Ames has offered a pig for tomorrow—does the tradition include sacrificing it at midnight?”
“Not that I know of! But it’ll have woken half the neighbourhood, whatever it is! I must fly!”
And she was gone.
For a moment Ernest was determined to ignore the noise. He wanted to lie back and recall the delicious proof of love that she had given him. It was no use, though. Within moments he heard noises from below. The rest of the household was awake. After what he had done on the night of the fire, it behooved him to rouse himself. He was already struggling back into his clothes when Tinkler tapped on the door.
“Coming!” he said resignedly.
And, when he descended to the hallway, found Alice there—attired again in jersey and trousers, and looking indescribably beautiful.
Not just looking. Being. Something has entered into that girl … Wrong. She was a girl. Now she’s a woman.
And an extraordinary corollary followed.
I wonder whether anybody else will notice.
They did.
This time it wasn’t he who wore the mantle of authority. She did. She quieted Mrs. Kail, sent her to tell her grandfather he could go back to sleep, and found a lantern and set forth with him down towards Old Well Road and the site of the third of the well-dressings.
Where others had already begun to gather, also bearing lanterns. Among them was Gaffer Tatton, fully dressed. Sensing Ernest’s surprise, Alice murmured, “He lives in that cottage opposite. And alone. I don’t suppose he takes his clothes off very often.”
Ernest couldn’t help smiling. That explained a lot!
But why was he so happy? Why was he blatantly holding his companion’s hand as they joined the others? He couldn’t work it out. He felt as though he were in the grip of a power beyond himself, and kept looking to Alice for guidance.
But she offered none, and none came from anyone else, until they had reached the bottom of the slope and were able to see what the rest of the people were staring at.
The well-dressing was unharmed. But, immediately before it, at the spot where Gaffer Tatton had told him grass was growing on leaf-mould that had accumulated over nothing stronger than tiles and mortar, there was a gaping hole.
And, lying on the ground nearby, there was a mallet.
Realisation slowly dawned. Ernest said faintly, “Is it … ?”
“We think so, sir.” Hiram Stoddard emerged into the circle of light cast by the lanterns. “It were young Roger as tipped us off. Here, young feller, you’re old enough to speak for yourself.”
And Roger the coachman was thrust forward from the crowd.
“Well, sir,” he began awkwardly, “since you left the Hall her ladyship has been acting stranger and stranger. In the middle of the night we heard her getting up. I was roused by May—that’s her maid, sir, as sleeps in the room next to hers. She said the mistress had gone out, muttering to herself like.” An enormous gulp. “She said she thought—excuse me, sir—she must have taken leave of her senses!”
“So?”
Ernest would have liked to be the one to say that. In fact it was Alice. Very calm, totally heedless of what the men around might think of her masculine attire.
“Well, sir …” Roger shifted uneasily from foot to foot. “As you know, sir, there’s a mallet kept next to the dinner gong at the Hall. I saw it were gone. I couldn’t think on anyone else as mighta taken it.”
Ernest bent to pick up the mallet. He said, turning it over, “Yes, I recognise it. You think she set out to smash the well-dressings?”
Everyone relaxed, most noticeably Gaffer Tatton, who nudged those nearest to him in the ribs.
“It would fit,” Alice said in a strained voice. “Only she didn’t know how weak the cover was. Being so fat …”
“Ah”—from Gaffer Tatton. “She’ll do for two, she will.”
The others pretended not to understand, but even Ernest got the point. At length:
“Weren’t nothing anybody could do,” Hiram declared, and there was a murmur of agreement.
Ernest glanced from face to face. He knew, in that moment, that this was what they’d hoped might happen. It would be no use arguing that if they had turned out sooner in response to the scream they might have saved his aunt’s life. Anyway, why should they? He would not have wanted to …
Again he sensed the presence of a power beneath the ground. Here, in the lonely small hours of the night, he could clearly hear for the first time the rushing of the water far below.
No longer pure, of course.
“Bring hooks and ropes,” he ordered gruffly. “We’ll pull her up. And people who use the water from this well had best avoid it for the time being.”
“We thought of that, sir,” Hiram said. “Those who draw on it will let their taps run the rest of the night.”
“Wash her away,” said Gaffer Tatton with a gap-toothed smile, and plodded back across the road to home.