Kingdom Lost (29 page)

Up to this moment she had not thought of where she was going. Away from Holt—away from Eustace and Aunt Helena—as far away as possible But now that she had come out upon the road, she had at least to decide whether she would turn to the right or to the left. If she turned to the right, she would pass Waterlow; and if she turned to the left, she would come, after seven miles, to Renton.

She stood in the road and thought about going to Timothy. Timothy was her friend, and he was kind. But he was Aunt Helena's brother. When she went to him before, he had taken her back to Holt. If she went to him now, and he said she must go back to Holt, she would be back in the cage again; and this time she would never, never get out any more. Her heart sank. Why hadn't Timothy come near her all day? He had taken her back to Holt and he had left her; and he hadn't come back. It wasn't any use going to Timothy.

She began to walk in the direction of Waterlow, and when she had gone a dozen steps, she told herself that she wasn't going to Waterlow, she was going to London. It wasn't her fault if she had to pass Timothy's house to get there. She began to wonder how long it would be before they found out that she was gone. It would take her three quarters of an hour to get as far as Waterlow. Even if she walked all night, she couldn't get to London. And she wasn't sure that she wanted to go to London. She thought of going to Marjory. But suppose Aunt Ida said that she must go back. No, she couldn't go to London. She would take the road that turned off just beyond Waterlow, because it went down into deep woods where she could hide. She thought she could walk as far as the woods. Then she could climb into a tree, and when she was rested she could walk on again. She had three pounds in her purse, and she could go for quite a long time without food.

When she came to the old stone pillars that marked the entrance to Waterlow, she stopped. The house drew her. The panelled room that looked upon the garden and the river drew her. In her thought it was lighted, and the garden was not so dark but that you could see the flowers. It was very dark here between the pillars, and she was tired already, though she had only come three miles.

She took a step in the direction of the house, and then checked, turned, and ran out between the pillars and along the lonely road. She was frightened because she wanted so much to run down the drive and tap at Timothy's window. She had to run away quickly to stop herself doing it. She ran on and on and stopped, panting, when her breath was gone.

It was whilst she was standing in the road with her suit-case at her feet, trying to get her breath and to stop feeling afraid, that she saw two bright starry lights far off where the road curved up over the hill. She stared at them, saw them disappear amongst the trees, and then shine out again. She began to hear the thrumming sound of a car coming nearer and nearer. The lights began to rush towards her, and the beam that they cast on the road slid before them, making black shadows in front of every pebble.

Valentine ran into the middle of the road and held up both her hands. The beam came rushing on. It touched her, enveloped her in a white blinding glare, and seemed to pierce her through and through. There was a grinding sound. The car came to a standstill, and a furious voice called out, “What the devil are you playing at?”

Valentine ran forward past the lights and caught at the side of the car. There was a man at the wheel. She blinked at him because she was still dazzled by the glare, and said,

“I'm so sorry.”

Mr. Sloan had had a fright. Carew had told him he wasn't fit to drive the car, and he had told Carew to go to Jericho. And then to have a girl popping up out of the middle of the road! It made you wonder whether you were seeing things. He repeated his first remark in slightly unsteady tones:

“What the devil are you playing at?”

“I want a lift,” said Valentine firmly and added as an afterthought, “if it wouldn't be too much trouble.”

Old Mrs. Podbury always said, “If it wouldn't be too much trouble,” when Aunt Helena offered her a lift. The proper answer was “Oh, no, not at all.” Valentine waited for the proper answer, and hoped that it would come quickly, because she wanted to fetch her suit-case from the side of the road, and get into the car and be whirled away from Holt at as many miles an hour as possible.

The proper answer didn't come. Instead, Mr. Sloan switched on his dash-light and looked at her. He saw a very pretty girl with parted lips and appealing eyes, and all of a sudden his mood changed.

“Hop in!” he said, and extended a helping hand.

“Oh, but I've got a suit-case.”

“Righto!” said Mr. Sloan.

Valentine disappeared into the dark. Mr. Sloan stared at the place where she had been. He was muzzy, but he wasn't binged. He couldn't have imagined her—not a girl as pretty as that. Carew was a fool. If he hadn't insisted on driving, he wouldn't have met this pretty girl. Carew was a fool.

Valentine came running back, and in a moment she was kneeling on the seat pushing her suit-case into the back of the car. Then, with a quick turn, she slipped down beside him and said,

“Please go on.”

Mr. Sloan wasn't sorry to move again. He was all right as long as he kept going. He didn't care what Carew said, he was perfectly all right as long as he kept going. But he did feel a bit muzzy when he stopped. He stepped on the accelerator, and the car leapt forward with a bound. The dark trees on either side rushed past them and were gone. The long brilliant beam showed the empty road shut in by walls of night. Valentine watched the needle of the speedometer run up to fifty, and then creep on.

Mr. Sloan broke the silence with great suddenness. His voice was vague. He took his right hand off the wheel and wagged a finger at her reprovingly.

“And what I say is this—and don't lemme have to tell you again—d'you hear?”

“What mustn't I do?” said Valentine, astonished.

“Don't lemme have to tell you again. That's what I said. Popping up out of the middle of the road when I was doin' sixty. And lucky for you I wasn't doin'—more, 'relse—I mightn't have been able”—he wagged a finger impressively—“to stop.”

Valentine thought him a very odd young man. She said, “You stopped beautifully. Which of those things do you pull to stop? How do you do it?”

“Like thish!” said Mr. Sloan.

He thrust at the brake-pedal with his foot and braced himself against the back of the seat. The car checked, skidded, and slid sideways in a sickening half-circle with a screech of protest from the brakes and the rasp of a locked rear wheel. Valentine was thrown violently against Mr. Sloan's left arm, wrenching the wheel over. His foot slipped from the brake-pedal. The car straightened up and shot forward. The needle once more began to approach fifty.

Valentine disengaged herself from Mr. Sloan and sat up.

“Thash what comes of trying to stop in a hurry,” he said with a good deal of mournful reproach in his voice.

Valentine got as far as possible into the corner. They passed Holt like a flash, and the trees were over them. If she had wished to go fast, she certainly had her wish.

They began to go faster still. The wind which they made went by them with a zip. The black, unseen landscape was full of shadows that streamed past like rushing water. Valentine did not know how long it was before the pace slackened.

Mr. Sloan resumed his homily:

“And what I say is thish—don't be in a hurry.”

“But I am in a hurry.”

“'Sa bad thing. You—take it from me. I say—I haven't met you before, have I?”

“No.”

“Couldn't forget such a pretty girl if I had. I say, you needn't—sit so far away.”

Valentine would have sat farther away if it had been possible.

The pace dropped to a slow fifteen. Mr. Sloan began to sing in a manner rather reminiscent of his brakes:

“There ain't no sense sitting upon a fence,

All by yourself in the moonlight—”

He stopped with a giggle. “Isn't any moon, but whash a marrer with the dark?” He burst once more into song:

“There ain't no thrill by the water-mill,

All by yourself in the moonlight.

There ain't no fun, sitting beneath the trees,

Giving yourself a hug, giving yourself a squeeze.

Love's a farce, sitting on the grass,

All by yourself in the moonlight.”

He took a hand off the wheel and stretched it out towards Valentine.

“Come along and give us a kiss!”

Valentine turned the handle of the door.

“I don't kiss people that I don't know.”

Mr. Sloan caught her by the arm.

“Must pay your fare!” he said. “Travelling without ticket shtrickly prohibited.” He laughed, still holding her. “Thash a good word! If you can say—prohibited—you can say anything. Shall tell Carew that.”

The car was describing an extremely erratic course. Valentine opened the door, struck hard at Mr. Sloan's hand, and twisted free. She got out on to the running-board and jumped for the grass at the side of the road. She fell sprawling, but she wasn't hurt. As she picked herself up, the car came to a standstill a dozen yards ahead. She scrambled down into a shallow ditch, climbed the bank on the other side, and half pushed her way, half climbed through the hedge at the top of it. She could hear Mr. Sloan calling her:

“I say—where are you? I say—”

His feet came stumbling back along the road.

“Never was so inshulted in my life! Girl running away! Inshulting! Thash the word—inshulting! Dash difficult word to say.”

He was about to get into the car when he remembered the torch in the near pocket. He took it out and amused himself by throwing the beam hither and thither. On the left hand side of the road there was a ditch, and a hedge, and a wood. If that girl thought he was going ploughing about in a beastly wood looking for her, she was damn well mistaken. On the other side there was a rickety paling, one of those strung-out affairs; and water—quite a large sheet of water. The light dazzled on it. No—and he wasn't going to swim to look for her either. She could just stay where she was and stew in her own juice.

He went to put back the torch, and caught sight of Valentine's suit-case. Immediately red wrath flamed up in him. She'd run away and leave her beastly luggage, would she? He wasn't an hotel—no, he was dashed if he was an hotel. He'd show her. He took the suit-case by the handle and hove it over the paling into the water. It landed with a splash among the reeds a dozen feet away, and sank in the mud. The beam of the torch showed just a corner sticking up.

Mr. Sloan nodded approvingly and got into his car and drove away.

Valentine, crouched down on the other side of the hedge, heard him go past muttering. Then she stood up, and wondered where she was. The ground sloped up from the hedge, and it was very rough and uneven; there were bushes and tangly things that caught her ankles and pricked them. Suddenly she ran into a tree. It was so dark—thick, blanketing darkness. Things touched you, and you couldn't see them. There was no difference between the trunk of the tree, whose bark rasped your hand, and the damp, black air on either side of it.

By one such tree Valentine halted. It had a branch that ran out from the trunk on a level with her shoulder. She climbed on to the branch, and found there was another close to it, but a little higher. These two branches and the trunk made a safe enough seat. She sat on the lower branch and leaned back into the angle between the upper one and the trunk. Just before she shut her eyes she saw a beam of light go sliding down the road below her. It slipped away and disappeared. The throbbing of the engine died away in the distance. Mr. Sloan and his car were gone.

Valentine slept in her tree with her shoulders against a thick branch, and her head leaning against the trunk, the little red hat between her and the rough bark.

She slept, and she dreamt about the island. It was a new dream. She saw the island very far away, like a black speck at the end of a long bright beam which traversed a dark and tossing sea. On either side of the beam the waves came up with high silver crests, to fall splashing and thunderous. But the beam made a straight gold path, and Valentine moved along it dry-shod and not afraid. She went sliding over the gold faster and faster, and the island rushed to meet her. And then, all at once, when she came near the island, the golden path came to an end, and a great black wave caught her up and reared itself higher and higher until it overtopped the height of the cliff. Valentine hung on the crest of it and looked down on the palm-trees and the pool. And someone was calling her: “Valentine—Valentine—Valentine!” And then the dream changed and she saw Timothy looking at her. And he said, “Valentine!” Then she woke up.

Just at first she didn't know where she was, and she nearly fell. Then she remembered, and sat up and stretched herself. It was still quite dark, and the wood was very still. Nothing stirred, because nothing was awake except Valentine. She shifted her position, and dozed again. This time she did not dream; but she woke suddenly with a start, because she heard Timothy say, “Valentine!” But when she looked about her, there was only a lonely greyness everywhere. The night was thinning away. Faint ghostly shapes of tree and bush showed in the waning dusk. Halsey Mere lay like a clouded mirror under the brightening sky. It would be dawn soon.

Valentine thought how hungry she was, and wondered when she would be able to get something to eat. She was stiff, and a little cold; and all her clothes seemed to have got into the wrong places. She sat leaning against the trunk of the tree, and watched the sun come slowly up out of the mists beyond the lake.

CHAPTER XXXV

Mrs. Ryven spent the morning at the telephone. From the moment she knew that Valentine had taken a suit-case with her, her courage and presence of mind returned. “Girls who are going to do something dreadful”—she used no plainer words than that—“do not pack and take away a suit-case.” The frightful visions of Valentine broken and crumpled under her own window, or sinking down like Ophelia into muddy waters and tangling weeds, gave place to the resentment which anyone might feel against a girl who had behaved so improperly, so ungratefully. Valentine, running away with a suit-case and leaving Eustace to be the laughingstock of the county, made no demands on Helena's compunction. A sharp gust of anger swept her mind clear.