“Insofar as I require admission to the enclosure, I believe you may. I understand that entry is effected by means of some plaque or token,” said Miss Emily.
He opened a drawer and extracted a metal disk. “I shall require,” she said, “seven,” and laid two half-crowns and a florin on the desk. The hall porter completed the number.
“No, no, no!” Major Barrimore expostulated, bouncing out from the interior. “We can’t allow this. Nonsense!” He waved the hall porter aside. “See that a dozen of these things are sent up to Miss Pride’s suite,” he said and bent gallantly over his guest. “I’m so sorry! Ridiculous!”
“You are very good,” she rejoined, “but I prefer to pay.” She opened her reticule, swept the disks into it and shut it with a formidable snap. “Thank you,” she said to the hall porter, and prepared to leave.
“I don’t approve,” Major Barrimore began, “I — really, it’s very naughty of you. Now, may I — as it’s your first visit since — may I just show you the easiest way?”
“I have, I think, discovered it from the literature provided, and need not trespass upon your time, Major Barrimore. I am very much obliged to you.”
Something in her manner, or perhaps a covert glance from his employer, had caused the hall porter to disappear.
“In respect of my letter,” Miss Emily said, with a direct look at the Major, “I would suggest that we postpone any discussion until I have made myself fully conversant with prevailing conditions on my property. I hope this arrangement is convenient?”
“Anything!” he cried. “Naturally. Anything! But I do hope—”
“Thank you,” said Miss Emily, and left him.
The footpath from the hotel to the spring followed, at an even level, the contour of an intervening slope. It was wide and well-surfaced, and, as she had read in one of the brochures, amply provided for the passage of a wheeled chair. She walked along it at a steady pace, looking down, as she did so, at Fisherman’s Bay, the cottages, the narrow strip of water and a not very distant prospect of the village. A mellow light lay across the hillside; there was a prevailing scent of sea and of bracken. A lark sang overhead. It was very much the same sort of afternoon as that upon which, two years ago, Wally Trehern had blundered up the hillside to the spring. Over the course he had so blindly taken there was now a well-defined, tar-sealed and tactfully graded route, which converged with Miss Emily’s footpath at the entrance to the spring.
The spring itself, its pool, its modest waterfall and the bouldered slope above it, were now enclosed by a high wire-netting fence. There were one or two rustic benches outside this barricade. Entrance was effected through a turnpike of tall netted flanges, which could be operated by the insertion into a slot machine of one of the disks with which Miss Emily was provided.
She did not immediately make use of it. There were people at the spring: an emaciated man whose tragic face had arrested Jenny Williams’s attention at the bus stop, and a young woman with a baby. The man knelt by the fall and seemed only by an effort to sustain his thin hands against the pressure of the water. His head was downbent. He rose, and, without looking at them, walked by the mother and child to a one-way exit from the enclosure. As he passed Miss Emily his gaze met hers, and his mouth hesitated in a smile. Miss Emily inclined her head and they said “Good evening” simultaneously. “I have great hopes,” the man said rather faintly. He lifted his hat and moved away downhill.
The young woman, in her turn, had knelt by the fall. She had bared the head of her baby and held her cupped hand above it. A trickle of water glittered briefly. Miss Emily sat down abruptly on a bench and shut her eyes.
When she opened them again, the young woman with the baby was coming towards her.
“Are you all right?” she asked. “Can I help you? Do you want to go in?”
“I am not ill,” Miss Emily said, and added, “Thank you, my dear.”
“Oh, excuse me. I’m sorry. That’s all right, then.”
“Your baby. Has your baby…?”
“Well, yes. It’s sort of a deficiency, the doctor says. He just doesn’t seem to thrive. But there’ve been such wonderful reports — you can’t get away from it, can you? So I’ve got great hopes.”
She lingered on for a moment and then smiled and nodded and went away.
“Great hopes!” Miss Emily muttered. “Ah, mon Dieu! Great hopes indeed.”
She pulled herself together and extracted a nickel disk from her bag. There was a notice by the turnstile saying that arrangements could be made at the hotel for stretcher cases to be admitted. Miss Emily let herself in and inspected the terrain. The freshet gurgled in and out of its pool. The waterfall prattled. She looked towards the brow of the hill. The sun shone full in her eyes and dazzled them. She walked round to a ledge above the spring, and found a flat rock upon which she seated herself. Behind her was a bank and, above that, the boulder and bracken where Wally’s Green Lady was generally supposed to have appeared. Miss Emily opened her umbrella and composed herself.
She presented a curious figure, motionless, canopied and black, and did indeed resemble, as Patrick had suggested, some outlandish presiding deity, whether benign or inimical must be a matter of conjecture. During her vigil seven persons visited the spring and were evidently much taken aback by Miss Emily.
She remained on her perch until the sun went down behind the hill and, there being no more pilgrims to observe, descended and made her way downhill to Fisherman’s Bay, and thence, round the point, to Miss Cost’s shop. On her way she overtook the village police sergeant, who seemed to be loitering. Miss Emily gave him “Good evening.”
It was now a quarter to seven. The shop was open and, when Miss Emily went in, deserted. There was a bell on the counter but she did not ring it. She examined the welter of objects for sale. They were as Patrick had described them to Jenny: fanciful reconstructions in plastic of the spring, the waterfall and Wally’s cottage; badly printed rhyme-sheets; booklets, calendars and postcards all of which covered much the same ground. Predominant among all these wares, cropping up everywhere, in print and in plastic — smirking, even, in the form of doll and cut-out — was the Green Lady. The treatment was consistent: a verdigris-coloured garment, long yellow hair, upraised hand and a star on the head. There was a kind of madness in the prolific insistence of this effigy. Jostling each other in a corner were the products of Miss Cost’s handloom: scarves, jerkins and cloaks of which the prevailing colours were a sad blue and mauve. Miss Emily turned from them with a shudder of incredulity.
A door from the interior opened and Miss Cost entered on a wave of cottage pie, wearing one of her own jerkins.
“I thought I heard—” she began and then she recognized her visitor. “Ae-oh!” she said. “Good evening. Hem!”
“Miss Cost, I believe. May I have a dozen threepenny stamps, if you please?”
When these had been purchased Miss Emily said: “There is possibly no need for me to introduce myself. My name is Pride. I am your landlord.”
“So I understand,” said Miss Cost. “Quite.”
“You are no doubt aware of my purpose in visiting the Island; but I think, perhaps, I should make my position clear.”
Miss Emily made her position very clear indeed. If Miss Cost wished to renew her lease of the shop in three months’ time, it could only be on condition that any objects which directly or indirectly advertised the spring was withdrawn from sale.
Miss Cost listened to this with a fixed stare and a clasp-knife smile. When it was over she said that she hoped Miss Pride would not think it out of place if she, Miss Cost, mentioned that her little stock of fairings had been highly praised in discriminating quarters, and had given pleasure to thousands. Especially, she added, to the kiddies.