Nothing Venture (32 page)

Nan held the gate with her hands and leaned against it. She was out of breath, and the wind had beaten her until it was all that she could do to stand. There was no more lightning. The thunder rumbled a long way off. Through a lull in the wind she could hear another sound, the roar of the storm-driven sea. She heard the crash of waves that broke against the cliff. She leaned on the gate, and the rain came down, straight and heavy and cold. Perhaps nothing else would have roused her. After a minute or two she straightened up and began to feel for the latch; and as she struggled with it, the wind caught her and the gate together, and, the latch slipping, she was swung half across the path and flung down. She picked herself up slowly and began to walk in the direction of the house.

The path ran straight, but she could see nothing, though when she looked up the sky was grey, not black, and full of movement of great hurrying clouds. She did not know at all what time it was. She came to the front door, and guessed where she was by the feel of the worn paint under her groping hands. There was a step, and she stumbled at it and struck her forehead against the iron knocker, but without sounding it. She felt for the handle, turned it, and knew at once that the door was fast. She could not have expected anything else, but it was like a blow over the heart. She stood there struggling for breath and gathering her strength; then slowly, keeping her hand on the wall, she made her way about the house. It stood bare on the cliff with its face to the sea. She turned the second corner and came, her feet on cobbles, to the back door, and the latch of the back door lifted to her touch.

She stayed like that, with the rain drenching her short hair and running off her rain-coat. Then she pushed the door in and stood on the flagged step. There wasn't any sound. The house was dead, not dreaming as a house should be in the middle of the night with everyone in bed and asleep. There was no one asleep in this house; Nan knew that as soon as she came inside the door. But there was no one awake either. The house was stark empty.

Nan stood in the middle of the kitchen and felt the dead emptiness of the house come in on her. It gave her an odd numb feeling as if she had come to the end of thought and action. And then all of a sudden the telephone bell rang stridently. It sounded as loud as if it was in the room. No one had a telephone in their kitchen. The door must be open.

She moved toward the sound with her hands out, and the bell rang again, and kept on ringing. She was in a narrow passage, and the bell was ringing in front of her and to the left. The door of that room must be open too. And all at once, very faintly, she could see it—the two jambs and the sill, and a dark oblong that was the empty doorway. On an instinct quicker than thought she looked over her shoulder and saw the kitchen door, and the kitchen in a yellow twilight. The light moved and brightened. Where it was coming from she had no idea. She ran from it into the room on the right of the passage. And all the while the telephone bell kept calling from the other room across the way.

Nan stood behind her door and waited. The light was coming towards her, and footsteps with it. She left a crack to look through, and saw Robert Leonard go into the left-hand room with an unshaded paraffin lamp in his hand. It was a wall-lamp with a tin reflector. There was a smell of warm oil and soot. She saw him set the lamp on a table and turn it down a shade. Then he passed out of sight, and the bell stopped as he took the receiver off the hook.

Nan opened the door a little wider and listened breathlessly. Who could be ringing up at such an hour? it must be long past midnight. From the sound of the sea, the tide must be nearly full—and high tide would be somewhere about five o'clock. At the very least the night was far gone, and the dawn not far away.

“What are you ringing up for?” said Robert Leonard in a low, furious voice.

Nan could hear the sound of the answer; it rustled and whispered against the microphone. If she had been in the room, she might have caught the words.

Robert Leonard said, “Don't be a fool!”

Nan opened her door and slipped into the passage. Try and strain as she would, she could hear no more than that ghostly whispering. She had no picture of Rosamund sitting up in bed with her lips at the mouthpiece of her bedside telephone and her voice hard with alarm.

“The storm waked me.”

“Go to sleep again.”

“I can't. I'm thinking of the tide—spring tide, with this wind behind it.”

Robert Leonard said, “Don't be a fool!”

“Take him up into the cellar, Robert.”

“Anything else?”

“You must! I shall dress and come down unless you promise.”

Nan made nothing of this—“Don't be a fool!”.… “Go to sleep again.”.… “Anything else?” She turned her head, and became aware that light was still coming from the kitchen. At once she passed down the passage and stood at the door looking in. The light was not in the kitchen. It came from an open door in the corner by the dresser, and it struck upwards with a faint, uncertain glow.

Nan came nearer, and saw the brick steps that went down into the cellar. She knew now why she had come to this house. She stopped being tired, and she stopped being afraid. She went down the steps, and saw a brick cellar, and in the middle of it a barrel standing on end with a candle on it in a greasy candlestick; and in the corner, propped back against the wall, the lid of a trap-door, with the trap very black below it. Robert Leonard had come up from here with the lamp in his hand.

She took her torch out of her pocket and sent its beam to search that black opening. It showed more steps, and she went down them, and so into a long low passage which was cold and very silent. She walked in the shining path which was made for her by the beam of her torch. Only once in a way when her hand shook did she see anything but that straight, shining path. Her hand did not shake because she was afraid, but because she had herself been so buffeted and shaken by the wind that from time to time an involuntary tremor passed over her. When this happened, she saw the roof, or a bit of the wall, most terrifingly black and near. The path had a very slight downward slope. It ran straight for about a dozen yards, and then there were more steps, and after that a steeper and more irregular slope. Somewhere at the back of Nan's mind was the knowledge that she was going down towards the sea; but her thoughts were not concerned with this knowledge, they were concerned only with Jervis.

The path became rougher. At first it had been paved with brick; now it was stony, and the walls, when she caught a glimpse of them, were not built any more. The passage was ceasing to be a passage and becoming a fissure. It bent sharply once or twice.

All at once the circle of light from her torch dazzled on a huge jutting rock which blocked the way. Nan stood still and swung the light first to the right, and then to the left. On the right a narrow fissure ran up to the roof and split it. On the left the path went on, curving round the great boulder.

Nan came round the bend, and saw, about five yards away, Jervis lying as she had seen him lie in her dream. The light fell on his upturned face and on the wet stone that made his bed. He was wrapped in a blanket, but one arm lay outside and the hand was clenched on the bar of an iron gate which rose from floor to roof between them.

Nan stood quite still. Her eyes were shut. In her dream they had been open. She moved the light from his face, and saw how the bars ran up and were fastened into the stone. She moved it again, and saw the light flicker over a wide darkness of water. At once she ran forward. What she had at first thought to be a continuation of the passage was a mere ledge like a doorstep, thrust out from the gate over who could say what threatening depths.

She came to the gate and shook it, and as she did so, the water lifted with a huge gurgling swell, stood level with the ledge, and then dropped back again with a sucking sound.

At the same moment Jervis opened his eyes and, pulling on the bar, sat up.

XL

Jervis had been in the cave for forty-eight hours. Rosamund Carew had visited him twice. He had had enough food to keep him going, and she had left him the blankets, but he had never been within reach of a candle, matches, or the much coveted bread-knife. Robert Leonard had been once again. But all that was many hours ago. There had been moments when he was ready to sign away, not a part, but the whole of his birthright. These were not, however, the moments when Rosamund or Leonard were making their demands. To give way under threat, to knuckle down to Leonard's increasing insolence, to fall in with Rosamund's calm assumption that because she wanted money it was for him to provide it, was beyond him. When the dark closed down, and each successive tide reached higher, he might contemplate surrender; but at the first glimmer of returning light, the first sound of Rosamund's calm or Leonard's brutal voice his resistance stiffened.

He woke with the light on his face, gripped the bar, sat up, and saw, not Rosamund—it wasn't tall enough for Rosamund—not Rosamund, but one of those dreams which come out of the darkness and the silence. His wrist was bound to the bar with a handkerchief. He fumbled at the knot, and Nan went down on her knees and put her hands on his and held them fast. The torch rolled over on its side and sent a shaft of light between them. Her hands came into it—little brown hands that he knew; not Rosamund's hands. The knot parted, the handkerchief dropped down. He waited for the dream to go away. But it stayed. The little brown hands were warm on his, and one of them wore his ring. He said, “Nan!” and she said, “Jervis!” and all at once it wasn't a dream any longer.

He rose on his knees and caught her by the shoulders with his hands thrust through the bars.

“Nan!” he said. “Nan!” And Nan put up her face, and he kissed her with a desperate straining towards life, and love, and happiness, and all those other everyday things which were in jeopardy.

Nan kissed him back. He had been lost, and she had found him. And in her dream he had been dead, but he was holding her with living arms and kissing her with living lips. How could she do anything but hold him with all her strength and kiss him with all her love? Her happiness was almost more than she could bear. They clung together, and scarcely knew that the bars were there.

Then the black swell lifted again and washed right over the sill. Jervis got on to his feet and pulled her up. She stooped for the torch, and found it lying in water. The tide was about their ankles, and even as she straightened herself, it lifted again without any sound. Nan caught at the padlock with both hands.

“It's no use,” said Jervis—“he's taken the key.” Then, quickly, “How did you come here?”

“I don't know,” said Nan. “I came. I saw you in a dream.” She added after a moment, “There's a storm.”

“It's driving the tide. What is it—thunder, or wind?”

“Both.”

“Wind off the sea?”

“Yes—yes, it is.”

The water rose again with a gentle swirl but no sound. It had never come higher than a good hand's-breadth below the ledge. At this rate it would be up to their knees before he could so much as think what to do.

He said, “Does anyone know you're here?”

“No. F.F.'s away. I left a note for him.”

“We must get out of here,” said Jervis. “You must get out and get help. You're not shut in?”

“No.”

“You'd better get hold of Basher—there's no time to do anything about the police.”

“He's away.”

“Then you must knock up Martin at the lodge. He'd better get hold of the chauffeur. Leonard's armed. Is he in the house?”

“Yes—telephoning. The bell rang—he came up out of the passage and left it open.”

“Then he'll be coming back. You must go.”

She leaned towards him, and they kissed again.

He said, “I'll be all right—I can hold on to the bars.”

He felt her quiver; he felt her cheek cold against his. And then without a word she ran from him round the bend.

From the moment of her waking until this very moment Nan had been in some strange prolongation of the dream in which she was looking for Jervis and had no room in her thought for fear. She had to find Jervis, and nothing else mattered. All the ordinary movements of thought were benumbed. Now, as she ran from Jervis, the dream went, and the numb thoughts quickened into painful life. She had left Leonard telephoning. If he had finished, he would come back and shut the trap. Perhaps he had already shut it, and she and Jervis were closed down here together in the dark. Perhaps he was coming down again, and she would meet him suddenly.

She turned the last bend, and as she came to the steps which led to the straight paved end of the passage, she switched out her torch and caught her breath in a gasp of relief. There was an uncertain glow ahead of her. The trap was still open, and a faint candle-light showed the worn edges of the brick steps going up into the cellar.

And then all at once there was something wrong. The light was brighter—it was too bright for candle-light. Nan stood stock still and stared at the open trap. It was about a dozen yards away. A broad yellow beam was coming through it, and suddenly there was a man's foot in a heavy boot on the topmost step. Robert Leonard was coming down.

Nan turned and ran wildly down the steps and along the black passage with her hands stretched out in front of her as if to ward the darkness from her face. It was sheer panic, and it might have ruined them both if she had not run into the rock at one of the turns and so brought her up short. She had cut her hand, but she did not feel it. She could see a yellow glow behind her, and she could hear Leonard's footsteps as she turned the bend. He couldn't see her now. She switched on her torch, turned another corner, and clutched at her courage with all her might. If she could find anywhere to hide, if she could let him pass her, then she could run back and get help for Jervis. She remembered the boulder at the last bend—the path went round to the left of it, but on the right there was a fissure that went right up to the roof. She ran on, fighting the thought that it was too narrow to be of any use. She came to the place, and her heart sank. The cleft was not a foot wide. She ran on down the path, and saw Jervis nearly up to his knees in water holding on to the bars of the gate. Her feet splashed in a ripple that ran to meet her.