The Coldstone by Patricia Wentworth Page A

She liked to wake tidy in the morning. She thought about Susan, and the core of her heart was warm. She thought about an earlier, softer Susan, pretty, gentle, sweet—Susie, so pretty-spoken—William’s darling. He never spoilt the others, but he spoilt Susie. She could see William now, ever so big and strong with his little maid on his shoulder, ducking his head to come in at the door, and Mr. Philip behind him laughing—“I say, you might let me carry her for a bit!”
    She fell into a dream of her own courting. William, too shy to speak, snatching a kiss in the dusk. And then it wasn’t her and William, but Susie with her floating curls crying bitterly at her mother’s knee: “Oh, Mother, I love him true—I love him true!” And again, Philip, on the threshold, looking at them.
    Young Susan lay awake in the dark, three pillows heaped behind her and only a sheet for covering. It had been in her mind that she would fall asleep at once. But she lay awake. It was just as if she had come up against a smooth, blank wall. There was a door in it somewhere, but she couldn’t find it, though she kept feeling for it with groping hands.
    In the end, the wall melted and let her through, and she saw Garry, with a face like a demon, hurling a great stone down upon her from the top of a high black mountain. The stone broke into three pieces and fell into the sea, and three rushing fountains sprang up from where the fragments had fallen. Only they were not fountains of water, but fountains of fire.

CHAPTER NINE
    Bernard West arrived next day. Anthony dug out the aged Daimler and drove into Wrane to meet him. It was four years since he had seen West. He found him the same, but yet not the same. Small, lean, dark, opinionated, intolerant, he was everything that West had been, only there was more of it. In the four years he had intensified to such a degree that another four at the same rate would land him in caricature.
    By the time they had covered the seven miles back to Ford St. Mary, Anthony began to wonder how they were going to get on. He had been a good deal peeved because West was only sparing him a couple of days on his way to join a walking tour, but already two days seemed to be rather a long time.
    West talked a great deal. He always had talked a lot; but in those days one said “Shut up!” and hove things at him. He had developed a scholastic eye and a manner of competent authority. One could no longer throw things at him, and he remained unresponsive to the politer ways of saying “Shut up!”
    Anthony walked him up to see the Coldstone Ring, and he had plenty to say about it. It wasn’t his subject, but he could quote Karnak, and Stonehenge, and Avebury—dolmens—sun and serpent worship—and the Bronze Age.
    He immediately propounded a theory that there had been an inner and an outer circle of stones, and that the prostrate stone had not fallen, but was a true altar stone, occupying the central position and lying east and west, so that the officiating priest might face the rising sun as he stood to sacrifice. All this from a cursory and casual glance at two upright stones and one lying flat in a bare stony space ringed about with high, ripe meadow grass. Then, still talking, off again down the hill, turning every now and then to admonish Anthony with lifted hand as if he addressed a class.
    â€œIf we postulate a double ring, the missing stones have to be accounted for, and I expect to find them here there and everywhere in this village of yours. Your own gates—have you thought of that?—are, in all probability, cut from one of these monoliths. But of course your local archæological society may have some information—not that these local people are to be relied upon, but still they might be able to furnish some data.”
    Anthony got a word in edgeways.
    â€œSir Jervis wouldn’t let them see the Ring.”
    â€œ What? ”