‘Then I shall send for his partner. We haven’t met him yet, but I suppose he is competent, and I have no doubt that Louisa has supplied you with his name.’
‘It is Gardiner. She says he is very clever. But there is no need to send for him – I am quite all right.’
‘Then you can come down to tea. I will ring for Anna.’
As she had not been seen, Candida thought it best to slip away.
Derek did not return until it was time to change. The evening dragged. It was Miss Cara who saved the situation by asking for music.
‘Some of those nice old waltzes, and the duets you and Candida were practising.’
Once at the piano, it was easy to stay there. Miss Cara, pleased and relaxed, leaned back in her chair, fingering out the tunes upon her knee or humming a bar or two in a kind of toneless whisper. With yesterday’s late evening for an excuse, she was able to make a move before ten o’clock, and Miss Olivia went with her.
Derek and Candida looked at each other.
‘You got home all right?’
She nodded.
‘Stephen dropped me at the gate. Did you get anything fixed?’
‘I’m practically a garage proprietor. I’ve been going through the books with Mr. Adamson. If he’d any tact he’d have turned me over to Jenny, but not a bit of it! And in between showing me the ropes he told me all about everything that had ever happened from the word go.’
Candida laughed.
‘Where was Jenny?’
‘Sitting behind the counter, and coming backwards and forwards with ledgers and those spiky things you stick bills on, and reminding him about anything he happened to leave out. You know, she really is a marvel. I shall never know half as much about it all as she does.’
They put away the music and went up together with so much friendly feeling that it seemed natural enough when he put an arm about her and kissed her good-night at the top of the stairs.
She was just going to get into bed, when Anna came in.
‘Perhaps if you will come and say good night to Miss Cara – ’
‘Is anything the matter?’
Anna flung out her hands.
‘She is sad – she cries all the time!’
‘But why? She was all right downstairs. Derek played, and we sang – ’
‘Yes, yes – it is because of that – it reminds her of the old days! And then she thinks that Mr. Derek will be going away and there will be no one to play and sing any more – and she thinks that you will go away too! And she thinks that when she loves anyone it is always the same thing – they go away and they do not come back! She thinks about Mr. Alan and she weeps for him!’
Candida said, ‘I’ll come.’
But when they reached Miss Cara’s door it was opened with great suddenness by Miss Olivia in a black velvet wrap. Candida thought she looked like an angry raven. Her foot stamped the floor and she said, whispering fiercely,
‘She is not to be disturbed! I do not know what Anna is thinking of to bring you here! Go to your room and stay there
She stepped back as she spoke, and the door was shut. There was the sound of a turning key.
Anna said, ‘Dio mio!’ And then she had Candida by the sleeve, pulling her away. When they were round the turn where the stairs went down she stopped. Her hand shook on Candida’s arm. She said in a stumbling voice, ‘After forty years – still I am afraid of her – ’
Chapter Twenty-three
The last thing Candida heard before she slept was the rain dashing against the windows. It went through her mind that it must be driving in, and then she slid away into a dream in which the sound was changed to the voice of someone weeping bitterly and comfortless. She didn’t know who it was, and she didn’t know how long it went on, but she waked suddenly with the wind swirling into the room and the curtains wet and flapping. It was quite difficult to get the windows shut. There was a gale blowing, and the casements strained against it. After she had got them fastened there was quite a lot of water on the floor. There were cloths on a pail in the housemaid’s cupboard just across the passage. She fetched them, got the water mopped up, and then found she had to change her nightgown.
When she and the floor were both dry she stood a minute and listened to the wind. It came against the house in great roaring waves and went howling through the gap between the old back wall and the hill. It came to her that Miss Cara might be frightened. She remembered hearing her say that the wind at night was a sound that frightened her, and Miss Olivia had said ‘Nonsense!’ very sharply. She wondered whether Aunt Cara was awake in the dark and afraid. There was only a bathroom between the sisters’ rooms, but she didn’t think Cara would call for help, or that Olivia would come to her if she did. She wondered if the door would still be locked.
And then, without any conscious decision on her part, she had her own door open and was feeling her way to the end of the passage. When she turned the corner she had the light behind her, and so came to the head of the stairs. The hall below was a black pit. She skirted it and went softly down the corridor to Miss Cara’s room. When she came to the door she stood there listening. Here in the middle of the house the sound of the wind was heavy and dull. No other sound came through it. If she had called aloud, no one would have heard her. She could try the handle and have no fear that anyone would wake. She turned it, and felt the door give under her hand. The room was perfectly dark – no shape of the windows, no faintest glimmer of light, the wind shut out, the curtains closely drawn. She could hear no sound of breathing. She could not even distinguish the position of the bed. There was only darkness and the heavy droning of the wind.
She stood like that and let the minutes go by. If Miss Cara was awake and afraid, surely she would have put on the light. She wouldn’t just lie in the dark and do nothing about it. After what seemed quite a long time Candida drew back and closed the door. She did not know, she could not have known, how bitterly she was going to regret this most reasonable action. Go over it as she would, she did not see how she could have done anything but what she did. And yet it hurt her at her heart, and always would.
It may have been the faint jar of the closing door that touched Miss Cara’s sleeping thought. It may have been the next wild gust that shook the house, or it may have been an earlier one. It may have been the sense of Candida’s presence. No one was ever to know. Sometimes a very small thing slips into a dream and troubles it, or the utmost raging of a storm may leave it untroubled and apart. At some time during that night of wind and rain Cara Benevent rose up out of her bed, put slippers on her feet, and wrapped a dressing-gown about her. There was no means of telling whether she had a light to see by. It was certain that she left her room, but whether she went walking or sleeping no one could know. She went, and she did not return.
Candida went back to her room and slept until the cold grey dawn came up. She was awake when Anna burst into the room. She was dressed, but she carried no tray. The tears ran down her cheeks and her eyes were wild. She fell down on her knees by the bed, her arms flung out and the breath catching in her throat.
‘My Miss Cara – oh, my Miss Cara! Why did I leave her – why did I not stay with her!’
Candida pulled herself up in the bed.
‘Anna, what is it? Is Aunt Cara ill?’
Anna gave a long wailing cry.
‘If she were ill, I would nurse her, I would stay with her – I would not come running to anyone else! She is dead! My Miss Cara is dead!’
Candida felt a coldness creep over her. It slowed her movements, her words. Her tongue stumbled as she said,
‘Are – you – sure?’
‘Would I say it if I were not sure? Would I not be with her? I leave her because there is nothing we can do any more! She lies there at the foot of the stairs and she is dead! The storm frightens her – she walks in her sleep – she falls and strikes her head! The old houses – the stairs are not safe – they are so narrow and so steep! She falls, my poor Miss Cara, and she is dead! And will you tell me how I am to tell Miss Olivia?“