When two more arrived next morning for the Father and Ariadne, this time faintly pornographic, the atmosphere became unpleasantly obscure. Suspicion lurked in every corner. Even Jude was questioned. The village was aroused. Everyone had a theory. What about the dwarfish brother of Farmer Williams who liked to peer into other people’s windows on dark evenings and spread evil reports? Mrs Bonython of the shop would not discuss it, but her dark eyes held unutterable secrets. Miss Want was sure that it was an enemy of Ariadne’s in London until she had one herself. She broke the news at the vicarage two days later.
‘What was it like?’ asked Laura.
‘I’ve got it here.’ She fumbled in her bag. A rosary fell out in a tangle of household keys … But there was no need to caricature Josephine Want. She was floating in a flood of her own tears holding a large handkerchief. ‘Poor old Joe!’ A faint outline of the Vicar and Ariadne at the altar adorned the background, It was cleverly done. Had Miss Want any theories? N-no. She couldn’t understand what it was all about. From the look in her eye when Guy came into the room, it was made obvious that she suspected him. Well, that was not surprising under the circumstances. Laura was uneasy again, for Ariadne’s first cry of ‘Guy!’ was very hot in her memory. His delight in practical jokes made him suspect even in Laura’s eyes, though this was not a joke at all. It was silly, but it was horrible. No one was at ease though each pretended to be.
At the end of ten days Ariadne heard from Clare Dobson, who wrote urgently that she must come at once to London, as there was news from Ireland that would surprise and she hoped please her. Her Aunt Grizelda, the only survivor of her family, having sold the big house, was now settling into a little home in the neighbourhood which she would like to share with Ariadne. She had had to wait a long time before she could get in touch …
‘Poor Aunt Grizelda, she was the best of them all, in fact the only one with a trace of humanity in her, the only one who ever wrote a friendly letter to me and that was only once soon after I left home. Of course, I never answered it.’
‘Never answered it?’ marvelled Laura.
‘Never. Why should I? I wanted to die for my art. Now that I’m not dead I’m alive enough to look forward to a peaceful life with the old dear in a comfortable little home. What could be better? — or more surprising?’
‘What indeed!’ Guy echoed with one of his crooked smiles. ‘And the fresco?’
‘No good. Left as it is, the Father can do what he likes with it, unless I sponge it out tomorrow. It was fun doing it for him, though. I shall do wild Irish abstractions and have a show in Dublin. No one will remember who I was, or understand what I mean. And I shall be rather vague about it too. It will be like a rebirth. Aunt Grizelda will leave the cottage to me and life will begin all over again. Who’d have thought it! I shall stay with Clare for a week and not mind a bit whether the sailorman is there or not. And you will all come and stay with me in Ireland. Clare will bring her baby, Laura shall have a piano and play waltzes and Guy will write a great book. What a dream!’
Ariadne was dreadfully excited. Eyes glowed, a bright spot of hectic colour gathered on each hollow cheek. The Mallorys gazed at her and each other in amazement. She was transformed. Here was an end of self-pity, it should be hoped, so long as Aunt Grizelda behaved herself, would not expect Ariadne to conform to old-fashioned ideas like breakfast at eight downstairs. Ariadne would live exactly as she liked. Aunt Grizelda would soon be under the spell. Ariadne would see to that and keep her under it until she died. This was superb.
‘I must leave you all at once. There’s no time to waste. A week in London will be too long to bear, but there will be a lot of things to attend to. I might leave tomorrow. Send a telegram today. Perhaps Guy will see to that while Laura and I are packing.’
At this moment Father St John passed the study window, his puzzled baby expression predominant. Soon he was in the room.
‘What’s this, what’s this. Are you leaving us so soon?’
‘Tomorrow. If you can get me to the station in time. I trust you all to help me. It will be a good riddance for everybody.’ She smiled gaily to make it a joke.
‘Not for me. What about my fresco?’ The Father put it that way.
‘Fresco will fade away. It will look better so. Perhaps I’ll blot it out tonight in the gloaming. Shall we have a gloaming party?’
‘Certainly,’ said Guy, and ‘Certainly not,’ ruled the Vicar, his face a study in exasperation. Then from another angle he attacked: ‘And you care to leave us before the caricature mystery has been solved?’
‘Why not? I have my guesses, and it will give us a reason to exchange at least one letter, when you do know the truth. I don’t really care. I am beginning a new life, Father, as I was telling Laura and Guy — it’s a rebirth, so that I shall be able to demolish the past. Not that I shall want to forget any of you as you don’t belong to my past but are stepping-stones into this new one. You will all visit me in Ireland,’ she concluded as she went to the door with a sweeping gesture and shut it behind her.
‘Decidedly rebirth,’ remarked the Vicar and said no more. He went out and was not seen until Ariadne had left next day. No bustle and fuss for him. No good-byes. The fresco was dead. It had been dead from the start, he assured himself. Against his early convictions, enchantment had faded, the saffron scarf which he found lying on the lawn, and asked Laura to forward, was grubby and dull. Laura had taken it from him with delightful insouciance.
‘That must go at once. She’ll be lost without it, poor girl.’
‘Lost — poor girl,’ he echoed with a derisive laugh, turning away as he said it after glancing for a moment at her face.
The vicarage was obviously not quite itself now that Ariadne had gone. The sense of loss was soon ousted for the Mallorys at least by a spiritual release from what had become a useless gesture of compassion and in Laura’s case certainly of affection and admiration.
The Father was sad, disillusioned, particularly because the fresco had been abandoned so light-heartedly for the prospect of a comfortable life elsewhere. In a moment everything was changed for Ariadne. And why should she not be glad after the hopeless humiliations of the last few years, Guy and Laura insisted when they all talked it over after the saffron scarf had been posted by Jude.
‘Quite right,’ agreed the Father. ‘Quite right, my dears, of course we must look at it that way. Confound her,’ he added, and then, ‘I wish we knew who sent those caricatures,’ with the usual smirk at Guy, which had begun to bore Guy and worry Laura. ‘Perhaps it was herself after all. Perhaps she already knew what was coming to her and thought this would really be a good joke on us.’
‘I’m quite sure not. That’s a nonsensical idea. She’s much too lazy to bother about anything so complicated as having the things sent from London. Local posting might not deter her, but I deny that she has the energy for anything more complicated. She would fade away in the middle of it.’
‘Perhaps we shall never know. At any rate, I beg you to let me have yours, Laura, and perhaps Miss Want will let me add hers to my collection in the special drawer. Then I should have the whole series.’
‘You can certainly have mine,’ said Laura. ‘Here it is in my pocket. No. 1 of the series. I don’t know why it came to me. It should have gone to Ariadne. I ought to have torn it up and saved an exhausting scene.’
‘And the pornography wouldn’t have mattered so much, yours and hers. Just a comment on an imagined situation and rather amusing. Ariadne wouldn’t have minded that.’
‘Yes, it was really a pity that the first caused such a to-do.’
‘Well, it’s all finished now. Ariadne is happy and we are at peace.’
‘Ah, yes, Guy,’ said the Vicar. ‘How right. How right.’
Guy rose and looked out of the window.
‘Raining. But I must go to the shop for my tobacco. Mrs Bonython promised it. Want a walk, Laurie?’
Laurie again! So rare. ‘Of course.’
It had been a squally day when Ariadne had left, and again not fit weather for the jingle and luggage.
So the old cab had called to take her to the station with Laura, but there was no lassitude or wanness, no apologetic feelings about the drive and relief on both sides when she had waved from the train, wearing an old cap of Laura’s which she had taken to.
Again a squall when the Mallorys opened the door of Mrs Bonython’s shop at dusk.
‘Ah, here you are, sir. Here’s your tobacco, just arrived.’
‘Just in time. My pouch is empty.’
‘Let me fill it.’ This was Mrs Bonython’s privilege which she took with a warm blush.
The pouch was filled, when the shop bell tinkled and a wild figure entered, followed by a dripping dog.
It was Miss Want, in search of biscuits and envelopes.
‘Ah, here we all are again,’ she said heartily. Rex shook himself over everybody. ‘Lie down, Rexie boy.’
‘Yes, here we all are, except Ariadne,’ said Guy, surprisingly.
‘Ah, well, she wouldn’t be out on a night like this.’
‘You haven’t heard, Miss Want. She left for London yesterday.’
‘Good gracious! How sudden. Not bad news, I hope?’
‘On the contrary, good news.’
‘Had she finished the fresco?’
‘No, she hadn’t.’
Suddenly Guy picked up the one candlestick and held it in Miss Want’s face.
‘You sent those pictures. Don’t try to deny it. I know. The truth, now, the truth.’
Miss Want’s distorted face was cruelly illumined by that single candle. For a moment she drew back; the candle was jerked nearer. ‘The truth now, the truth!’
‘All right. You’ve won. I did. I hated you all and I didn’t care. I wanted to get that woman away, and now she’s gone.’
‘Her going had nothing to do with you. Don’t imagine it.’
Mrs Bonython now retired quietly from the scene. Laura in a maze of astonishment at Guy’s attack on Miss Want was moved by the agonised face of the poor woman. ‘This is awful, awful.’ She wanted to follow Mrs Bonython but Josephine Want suddenly recovered her balance.
Anyway, she declared, she had had her fun. It was just a little joke in which poor Mr Potter was glad to join. He was very hard up, his wife was having another baby and she had paid him handsomely for his sketches. ‘Ten shillings apiece to be exact. Potter resented the existence of such people as the Mallorys and Ariadne and was glad to have a go at them. She herself disliked Ariadne Berden so much that she had thought of pushing her over a cliff when they were having a friendly walk and an opportunity occurred. Only just in time she had looked round and seen one of the farmers spying on them over a wall. They had gone at once to see who he was but he had disappeared. Ariadne looked over and saw him lying flat on his face in a ditch and laughing called out:
‘Hullo, here’s a dead man.’
It was rather quaint to think how nearly someone might have called out, ‘Here’s a dead woman!’ instead, and have been right.
Well, now the squall was over. She would sally forth. ‘Come, Rex, old man.’ She was really glad it was out. When all was said and done, it was only a little joke … ‘These are my biscuits, I think. Say good night to Mrs Bonython for me.’
‘Your envelopes, Miss Want.’ Guy handed them to her.
The shop bell tinkled again and she was gone.
‘How did you know?’
‘I didn’t. It was just an idea.’
Mrs Bonython came back,
‘I was as sure it were Miss Want as I stand here. So I says to John, and he shut me up. A sad business. An ill-wisht person, ill-wisht, poor lady.’
The Vicar received the news with equanimity.
‘Good for you, Guy. Looking back at it, we ought all to have known that she must be at the bottom of it. But who did the drawings?’
‘Potter, of course.’
‘Who is Potter?’
‘One of your parishioners who never goes to church. But would like to know you, I expect.’
‘I must call on him. What does he do and why is he here?’
‘He wants to be a writer but makes a few shillings with watercolours which he sells occasionally to local people. A wife and one child and another on the way. It would probably embarrass him if you called after all this. He is a neighbour of Miss Want’s.’
‘That doesn’t matter at all. You noticed, I expect, that I shut myself up a good deal while the posting was going on. Embarrassing. A new angle, you understand. So I shut myself up and did some not bad nonsense rhymes. Miss Want has cleared the air. I’m feeling better and healthier all round. What about a glass of altar wine to celebrate. Let’s drink her health, now that she need never come to the vicarage again … Or will she?’
Jude brought in the wine with a pleasing smile. There were four glasses on the tray. The Vicar poured, and after handing the fourth glass to Jude, half turning away as he always did under the stress of emotion:
‘Here’s to our better behaviour.’
The front door bell clanged.
‘And if I am not mistaken, here is Miss Want. Jude, another glass.’