Danger Point by Patricia Wentworth Page B

And that makes you a blazing anachronism. Everything in this room is old except us. That’s my grandmother’s piano — Dale’s grandmother, and Alicia’s too. The temper comes from her, but she sang like an angel — I can just remember her. And my father brought the carpet back from China — he was in the Navy, you know — and she got the curtains to go with it. My great-great-aunt Agatha worked that cross-stitch atrocity with the roses, thistles, and shamrocks somewhere about the year of the Indian Mutiny. That’s her mother in the Empire dress over the mantelpiece — a bit of a beauty in her day. And the bureau was her mother-in-law’s. So here you are, surrounded by relics of the past and nothing at all to show for your being here — nothing but Lisle in a green linen dress to show that this is Lisle’s own room. Something queer about that, isn’t there?”
    It was just as if someone had touched her with a cold finger. Her hand went up to her cheek. It was cold too. She said,
    “Don’t! You make me feel like a ghost.”
    He laughed.
    “Rather a fascinating thought, don’t you think? Not the old ghosts of a past generation coming back to haunt us, but us, all insubstantial and unreal, stepping into their places and haunting them.”
    He saw her whiten.
    “Yes — it feels like that. Tanfield makes you feel like that. That’s why I hate it.”
    There was a sudden change in his face. It had been gently mocking, but now it changed. Something went over it like the shadow that races over water when clouds are blowing — colour dies and sparkle vanishes. He said in a voice that had hardened,
    “Yes, you hate Tanfield — don’t you? But I don’t know that I should talk about it if I were you. For instance” — he was smiling again and his eyes were bright — “I shouldn’t say it to Dale.”
    Lisle’s hands went together in her lap.
    “Rafe — you won’t tell him!”
    He laughed.
    “I suppose that means that you haven’t told him yourself.”
    “Of course I haven’t. I didn’t mean to say it just now — it just slipped out. Rafe, you won’t tell him! It would hurt him most dreadfully.”
    “It might hurt you too, my sweet. Have you thought about that?”
    She said, “What do you mean?” and met a look which mocked, demanded, and then mocked again.
    “Don’t you really know?”
    She shook her head, looking down at her clasped hands.
    He whistled softly.
    “Not very bright, are you, honey-sweet? Not too bright and good for human nature’s daily food, as the poet Wordsworth said. A perfect woman nobly planned, to warn, to comfort, and command. Only Dale does the commanding in this house, and I’m doing the warning. That leaves you the sweet feminine rôle of comforter. And if Dale has to let Tanfield go, I don’t envy you your job. Have you thought about that?”
    Lisle said, “Yes.”
    “Well, I should go on thinking about it. I gather there isn’t much prospect of unloading any more land on to the government. Now if you really put your back into it, I feel you might Delilah old Robson into parting with enough hard cash to keep us going for another generation — peace in our time, you know.”
    She lifted her eyes and saw that he was not looking at her. He was sitting forward, elbow on knee and chin in hand, staring down at the carpet which his father had brought from China.
    “I’m not good enough at pretending,” she said. “I’ve tried, and it’s no use — he sees right through me.”
    His eyebrows jerked, the kink in them very apparent.
    “Not particularly opaque, are you?” His voice rasped on the words.
    “You don’t know how hard I’ve tried.”
    A shoulder jerked too.
    “My poor benighted child! Are you as dumb as you sound? You can’t try to love, to hate, or to stop loving or hating, or to prevent anyone seeing that you love or hate. I expect Robson’s got you taped just about as well as Dale has. And that being so, suppose you listen to the gypsy’s