“The quickest way back to Staineshead,” he said, “would be to strike straight over this hill and drop down into the road on the other side. We could go to Blagill and trust to getting a bus, but I don't know how they run, and the main thing now is to find Daphne as soon as we can.”
“Dammit,” said I, “we're out for a walk. Not, mark you, that I don't think it would be quicker to stick to the footpath than to take one of your short cuts, but I'm not convinced of the urgency, anyway.”
We crossed the park, Piers pointing out with rather a defensive air, as we approached the stream on the other side, that you could, with a little imagination, discern a kind of circular drive or track round the level space. We crossed the beck on the rocks and pushed through the marshy thickets of birch and willow on the other side, then tackled the steep hill.
Once we had got through the close and cobwebby plantations of conifers we stopped, sweating freely, beside a trickle of clear water and ate our sandwiches. After that it was a toilsome way up the moor. The sheep paths were not much use to us as they all ran horizontally, so we lugged ourselves slowly upwards through the tangle of bracken and heath, and finally reached the saddle in the ridge which we had seen from the Stone Circle. I say ridge, but it is a broad, more or less level mountain top, and, of course, most of it is bog and moss. It was very slow progress we made, but we kept advancing in a general Easterly direction, bearing, if anything, away to our left. It took us nearly as long to get over that hill as it had done to come from Staineshead to Ringstones by the path. But, of course, we couldn't have dreamed of going back by the same way we had come.
When, in the end, we got down on the other side and squelched in our sodden boots upon the metalled road we made up for lost time, and did a steady march of four miles an hour all the way to Staineshead. The bus from Blagill overtook us just as we came to the first houses of Staineshead.
Piers's idea was to go to the Post Office and begin his enquiries after Miss Hazel there. I agreed, but persuaded him to call at the principal pub in the place, the White Bear, and see if we could do something about our night's lodging. To my surprise, but not at all to his, they made no difficulty about giving us a room at a moderate price. We asked the landlady if she knew anything of Miss Hazel, but drew blank; however, she directed us to the Post Office.
I was wondering whether I dare propose to Piers that the investigation be postponed until we had had some tea, when our quest ended before it had well begun. Staineshead is not a big place, but still, the encounter was a stroke of luck. Half−way down the main street Piers suddenly exclaimed, “Hallo!” and darted off to the other side of the road. There, looking into a general store window, was a tall, fair−haired girl in a belted green frock, bare−headed, bare−armed, with a little boy holding one of her hands and industriously kicking out the toe of his shoe against stones of the shop−front.
Piers and the girl had already greeted one another before I came across to them, and were launched on half−embarrassed, half−laughing explanations, which were interrupted and made still more confused by my introduction, and then broken off altogether by our being joined by a middle−aged woman who came out of the shop accompanied by two olive−skinned, foreign−looking little girls of twelve and fourteen or so. We stood in a knot on the pavement and everybody talked at once, including the little boy, whose theme was simply and insistently tea. However, it emerged that the middle−aged lady was Mrs. Hancock, that she was Daphne's temporary employer, that little Bobby was her son and the two girls children of a friend staying with the Hancocks for the school holidays.
While Piers did most of the talking on our side, I, naturally, observed Daphne Hazel, the quarry, so to speak, of our wild−goose chase. She was very much the pleasant, active−looking girl I had pictured; just the girl who would have enjoyed such energetic gambols as she had described. Still, what struck me, and what couldn't well have been described in her first−person story, was her good looks. I admired in particular a most attractive combination of natural tones: a shining softness of pale hair, an intense blue of the eyes and a clarity of complexion where the blood brightened the light−brown tan of summer. That she recognised the satisfying harmony of those colours herself was indicated, I thought, by her having refrained from intruding on them any smear of synthetic carmine.
Mrs. Hancock made the amiable suggestion that we should go back with them for tea, so off we went on foot The house, it appeared, was not far out of the town. Piers and Daphne and the little boy walked in front and Mrs. Hancock and the two little girls and I followed on their heels. I was giving Mrs. Hancock a rather cautious account of our walk.
“Oh, Ringstones Hall!” she said. “Daphne and my husband can tell you a story about Ringstones Hall!”
I hesitated to ask what, because I was not sure how much she knew about Daphne's story, but then, from what Daphne was saying to Piers, I grasped that there wasn't much secret about it.
Daphne's voice expressed great surprise. “But didn't you get my letter?”
“No,” said Piers. “There was no letter.”
“But I wrote,” she protested, “and explained it all. I sent the letter off first, because I remember thinking when I was wrapping up the book, how silly—because I could have put the letter inside the book and saved twopence ha'penny. But I'd written the letter first and I licked the envelope and put the stamp on and gave it to Bobby to post without thinking.''
She stopped suddenly and we all stopped. She looked at Bobby, a child, I suppose, of some nine or ten years, with consternation in her face.
“Bobby!” she cried. “You did post that letter I gave you on Monday, didn't you?”
The child, put on his guard and all his natural mistrust of adults roused by this concentration of attention, tried to divert it by skipping the direct question with a brief nod and immediately seeking to interest us in a project, of which he seemed to have information, to make the green Sheepcar buses extend their service to Staineshead. I sympathised with this gallant but hopeless attempt to create a diversion. A few more years would teach him that there's nothing so pertinacious as a woman intent on fixing responsibility for a lapse. Reluctantly, therefore, he abandoned the bus subject and admitted that he had posted the letter.
“Yes, but when?” Daphne persisted. “Yesterday,” came the sorry confession.
Daphne gasped, “Oh, Bobby!” and looked up at us, blushing with comical guilt.
“I forgot it on Monday, but I remembered it yesterday morning and I did post it all right,” Bobby volunteered, finding explanation easier after an admission of the fact.
I don't think Piers wanted to catch my eye just then. The thought of the postman delivering the simple solution of all the mystery Piers had elaborated, probably at the very moment when he stood staring with a wild surmise at the mournful solitude of Ringstones Hall, was too much for me. My laughter puzzled Mrs. Hancock and it made Daphne's warm cheek glow the brighter.
“So that's why you came!” she said, as the full enormity of the misunderstanding sank in. “And you've been all that way to Ringstones! Oh dear, what an ass I was. But I can explain it all....”
“I was just going to suggest that you might explain it over tea,” said Mrs. Hancock, pleasantly. “Shall we go along?”
(3)
Mrs. Hancock's husband, she told me before we reached the house, was a doctor with his practice in Staineshead. The two young girls were the daughters of an Egyptian doctor, a friend of Dr. Hancock, who, it seems, had spent most of the war in Egypt. They were at school in England and had been spending the summer holiday with the Hancocks. Mrs. Hancock had thought it a good idea to get someone to come for the summer who could both help to look after the children and give them some tuition in English. It so happened that Dr Hancock had an old friend who was a lecturer at Towerton College and he had written to her on the chance that the job might interest one of the Towerton girls.