“Ah, your watch strap,” he said. “Do you know, it was so badly broken that I've had to make a new one. But I've made it just the same size, to clasp your wrist exactly. It won't come off again!”
We walked on until we came into the circular ride and there we turned and strolled slowly round the circuit of the park. He was in his sober, grown−up mood and for a long time said little, until, slipping his hand into mine, and squeezing my fingers hard with his remarkably strong ones, he asked:
“Do you want to leave Ringstones?”
We had not talked about my going away before. His asking that made me swiftly reckon up the time that remained to me and made me realise, sadly, that I had not so much longer to spend there. I hated to think of parting just then, and answered his question lightly, brushing the thought aside: “Oh, it'll be some time yet before I push off!”
“I want to keep you here for ever,” he said, still gripping my hand hard.
“Ah well, you can't do that, you know. Everything has an end. Except a circle.”
“A circle!” he exclaimed. “But Ringstones is a circle. And, look! We've made a complete circle now, and as soon as we've made this we begin another. You never can come to the end of Ringstones.”
“Can't we?” said I. “We can, then. I'm going to make tracks across the diameter of this circle and go in and change.”
He made no demur, and so we turned aside, through the trees and walked slowly, straight across the middle of the park towards the house. At the half−overgrown flat stone in the middle of the wide space of lawn Nuaman stopped and released my hand. It was the time of day when Ringstones was at its loveliest and when its dreaming peace and solitude seemed inviolable and everlasting. From that spot you saw and felt it most completely, for there the softly−coloured hills and the rich trees in all their heaviness of summer foliage made a complete circle round you. The house was hidden by a screen of copse. In all the visible world only the road on the hillside, seen here and there behind the rough vegetation that bordered it, told of this age and of human handiwork. I knew that I could never have enough of such loveliness, and that I should never in my life again know such profound content as that which Ringstones could give me on such a summer evening.
I think we were both reluctant to break the spell cast on us there by the evening light and by the unceasing song of birds and running water, powerful as an incantation to hold the mind in thralldom.
It was broken for us. Through that soft flood of music my ear caught a thread of harder sound: the distant crunching of wheels on gravel and the rapid clip−clop of a horse's hooves a long way off. Nuaman, whose ears were sharper than mine, had already heard it and was looking towards the slope of the Western hill. There, presently, beyond the trees of the park, the pony trap came into view with the pony going swiftly up the long slope of the road at its usual impatient trot. There was only one person in the trap, and that, I guessed rather than distinctly saw, was Dr Ravelin. We watched the trap until it reached the top of the road, and there, on the skyline, it pulled up and was immediately surrounded, as it seemed to me, by a number of figures, one tall one and a dozen or more shorter ones which came into view from further back on the moor. The sun was low over the hill and we were looking straight up into it. I was certain I saw the figures, but how they were dressed or who they were, I could not say. They were black shapes against the blinding golden light. Then, in a moment, the trap and they had disappeared over the skyline.
“So Dr Ravelin's gone. At this time of the evening,” I said in wonder. “But who on earth were all those people up there?”
Nuaman looked at me, studying, I thought, my expression. But he spoke carelessly. “Oh that,” he said, “that's Sarkissian, I suppose.”
“Well, but the others?”
“Oh, the people who're helping him on the road.”
He moved off slowly towards the house, thrusting his hands into his pockets and kicking the turf as he dragged his feet along, like any little boy pondering something important.
I went silently by his side. The deep sense of peace and harmony was gone. The friendly picture of the Ringstones I had grown to love had slipped aside and my first full view of the new one revealed where it had been left me with a weakness in all my limbs and a dreary emptiness in my heart. When Nuaman said good−night to me in the hall I could only stand and stare at his handsome, small brown face, so strangely vivacious, so complicated in its expression of triumph and delight, admiration, confidence and power. A wilder mischief than any I had seen danced in his eyes.
Half−way up the stairs he stopped, turned and leaned down just as he had done that first night; even then there was a caressing touch in his mockery.
“Good−night, dear Daphne,” he said. “You shall see everything tomorrow.”
Seeing that Dr Ravelin had gone, I told Mrs. Sarkissian not to bother to lay dinner in the big dining−room. I did not want to sit alone in the dusk. So I had supper with her and Katia in the housekeeper's room: a more cheerful place, but the company was little more cheerful than my own would have been. Katia was gloomier still than she had been in the morning. I think she had been weeping; and Mrs. Sarkissian would not talk about anything. Even to my direct question whether her husband had gone with Dr Ravelin, she replied only that she supposed so; and when I talked about the work−people on the road she was silent. She sat by the window with her head bent over her mending until it was nearly dark and I was forced to put down the magazine I had picked up to look at. Still, she would not light a candle. So we sat, all three of us, completely silent in the gloaming of the room.
Suddenly, making us all jump, the door was wrenched open. Katia leapt to her feet with a little gasp of fear, and I half rose, too, before I saw that it was only Sarkissian. I had not heard the trap return. Mrs. Sarkissian gave him a long stare, men bent again over the darning she could not possibly have seen. Sarkissian jerked his head back and Katia sidled out of the room, squeezing past him in the doorway with a cringing movement. Just as he closed the door behind the pair of them I thought— though it was too dark to be sure—I thought I saw him put his free hand on her shoulder.
(12)
I tossed and turned in my sleep. My mind worked furiously and yet I did not know what it was working on; images came crowding in on me, but I could not say images of what. I only knew that they were mischievous things that would not let me alone. It was too close. I threw my arms and legs about; something clung to my wrists and ankles. I squirmed and twisted to liberate myself, and at length got free of the clinging things and sat up.
The oblong of my window was faintly radiant with moonlight. I went over and looked out. The half−moon hung low in the West, over Ringstones Moor. I put my hand on the mullion of the window and the band of moonlight that fell across my wrist caught my eye. The moon held me by the wrist and something, I knew, was behind me. For a long moment I could not turn, and then with an effort I snatched my hand away from the stone and whirled round. The room was empty: my bed, my chair, my wardrobe and chest of drawers stood there, still and unchanged, only a little blurred in outline by the soft, uncertain light. I listened: there was no sound in all the house but the furtive, faint creaks of woodwork and little rustlings above the ceiling of my room. But I knew that I must move very quietly, for someone was awake not far away. I stood and thought exactly how I should dress myself and what I should take, then did it all deliberately and softly. I put on my corduroy slacks and dark green jersey and my walking shoes with rubber soles. I had a square, coloured silk scarf which I took from the drawer and spread out on the bed. On it I placed my powder−compact, my hair−brush and comb, a small first−aid outfit in a tin box which I kept on my dressing−table, my gym−shoes and my pocket French Dictionary. It was essential to take the dictionary, because otherwise the people where I was going would not understand me.