Nothing Venture (31 page)

“You're making a lot of noise,” said Leonard—“and a wife can't give evidence against her husband.”

“She can't be
made
to give evidence against her husband. But I shan't want any making.”

“Have it your own way,” said Leonard.

He shrugged his shoulders and went back to the front of the house. If he let Rosamund have her head now, he could pull on the curb later on. He wasn't really afraid of her going to the police. He was sure that when the time came, she would prefer King's Weare to being tried as an accessory in a murder case.

Jervis remained staring into the blackness. He was sure that he had seen Rosamund—or was he sure? His head swam, and his tongue, and gums, and the roof of his mouth felt like the slag of a furnace. Why hadn't Leonard come? He experienced an extraordinary narrowed-down determination to come to grips with Leonard. And then he became aware that he was shaking from head to foot, and that he was deadly cold. Could he hold Leonard with such shaking hands? He thought he could. If Leonard came up close to the bars as Rosamund had done, he thought that he could hold him. He wasn't sure if he had dreamed the part about Rosamund; but he was sure, if he once got his hands on Robert Leonard, that he would never let him go.

He thought these things. And then the black turned grey, and he saw the bars of the gate running up and down, and behind the black pattern that they made, Rosamund coming round the bend of the passage. She had a blanket over her arm, and she was carrying a tray in her two hands. She held it a little in front of her; and on the tray there was a candle in a guttered candlestick, and by the light of it he saw a teapot, milk and sugar, half a brown loaf, a rough chunk of butter, and a couple of eggs with one chipped egg-cup between them.

Rosamund set down the tray close to the bars and stuck the candle on a ledge about three feet above the floor.

“I've been as quick as I could,” she said in a perfectly matter-of-fact voice. She might have been apologizing to any visitor for some casual delay.

She knelt down and took up the teapot.

“You'd better start with a drink. I'll put heaps of milk in. I thought tea would be the best thing on the whole—it's very quenching, and it's hot.”

She pushed the cup through the bars. Jervis' hands closed on it hard. He had wanted to snatch like a starving animal. He controlled his hands to take it, but a third of the tea jerked from the cup before he got it to his lips and drank.

“You'd better go slow,” said Rosamund on the other side of the bars.

He could have killed her when she said that. Whether it was the release from his torture of thirst, or something in her voice, he couldn't tell, but a gust of rage came over him and was within an ace of carrying him away. She was feeding him, she had given him drink, and it was only one last effort of self-control which kept him from dashing the empty cup in her face. What? You trepan a man, have him knocked on the head, demand money from him by threats, leave him to drown—and then pour out tea for him with the most perfect social calm!

“Better have an egg next,” said Rosamund. “They're very soft-boiled—I knew you'd hate them raw.” She was cutting and buttering a piece of brown bread. “Give me back that cup when you've finished, and I'll pour you out some more.”

Jervis eyed the knife. It was a small carver, and it looked sharp, but he couldn't reach it. She had taken the bread off the tray and had turned away from him to cut it.

“Why doesn't Leonard come himself?” he said.

“Conscientious objections to feeding prisoners.”

“Are you really married to the swine?”

“I am. Here's your second cup. So you see I had to jilt you.”

“Why did you ever get engaged to me? You were married then, weren't you?”

She nodded.

“Stupid affair—wasn't it? Go a bit slower with that egg.”

“What was the point of getting engaged to me?”

Rosamund produced her cigarette-case and lit a cigarette. She had matches. Matches meant light. If she would put them down where he could reach them.—He didn't really care why she had got engaged to him; he wanted those matches. But she was answering his question.

“I don't mind telling you the whole truth.” She paused and blew out a pale cloud of smoke. “I've been married to Robert for ages—one of the fool things one does. I was twenty-one. It was just before I came to King's Weare. The great idea was that I should do the angel niece at Uncle Ambrose, confess all, and get him to provide handsomely for us.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Well, of course I was a fool. Robert came to stay, and Uncle Ambrose simply loathed him—you remember, it was just before you had that accident on Croyston rocks.”

“Accident?” said Jervis.

“Wasn't it one?”

“Leonard tried to do me in.”

“Who told you?” said Rosamund.

“Nan. She saw him. I didn't believe her.”

“No—you wouldn't!” said Rosamund. There was a bitterness in her voice. “Well, Robert was in the soup. He had to have money, or get out of the country. We had a most awful row. I guessed what he'd done, and he cleared out. He went to South America, and I didn't know whether he was dead or alive for eight years. Then he wrote to me, and last year he came back.”

“None of this explains why you should have gone out of your way to get engaged to me, when you knew you couldn't marry.”

“Here's your second egg,” said Rosamund. “I'll cut you some more bread and butter.”

She turned away, spread the loaf with butter, and cut a thick slice. She went on talking all the time, slowly and without any emotion.

“It was Robert's idea. Uncle Ambrose was dying, and Robert thought he'd settle a goodish bit on me if he thought I was going to marry you. And then when he left me practically nothing, I must say I saw red. You can't really blame me for taking advantage of the clause about your forfeiting the lot if you weren't married within three months.” She threw back her head and blew a smoke-ring. “Especially as you did me down over it,” she added. “Like another cup of tea? And then you'd better get those wet clothes off. They'll dry in no time in the sun. I've got a blanket for you to put on.”

That anger came up in Jervis again. In what sort of nightmare did you combine cousinly affection and attempted murder—or if not murder, at the very least the risk of it, and blackmail?

“My clothes are nearly dry.”

She put a hand through the bars to feel his coat. There was something horrible about the whole thing. He jerked away, and was nearly over the edge of the sill. The thought of the rocks below sobered him.

Rosamund, on her side, drew back from the bars. She was kneeling. The floor of the passage had stained her dress. The candle-light cast dark shadows on her temples. It made her ghastly pale. Or was it something more than the candle-light? She had let fall her cigarette; the fingers that had held it were clenched against her palm. There was a strained pause.

“I'm not to—touch you?” she said at last.

Jervis did not speak.

After a moment she lifted her head and laughed.

“Stay wet if you like! It doesn't matter to me! Now look here—are you going to be sensible and pay up?”

“No,” said Jervis.

“Not very grateful—are you? I've really been rather nice to you—much nicer than Robert—and the least you can do is to be friendly. You see, we've got to have the money. I told you all along that I couldn't get on without a decent allowance. If you'd settled twenty-five thousand on me as I suggested, we shouldn't have had any of this bother. I could have choked Robert off with twenty-five thousand down and no risk. What's he asking you now?”

“Thirty thousand.”

“Well, it'll be thirty-five thousand tomorrow, and forty the day after. You see, if you go west, I get the lot—and naturally Robert can't help thinking of that. Seriously, Jervis, you're being a fool. I'm holding Robert back, but I can't go on holding him back. We've been pretty good pals, and why shouldn't you settle thirty thousand on me? We'll go off to Peru, and you'll be rid of us. Come—is it a deal?”

“No,” said Jervis.

If she hadn't said that about their having been pals, he might conceivably have thought of making terms. Life was sweet, and Nan was sweet—and Robert Leonard wasn't bluffing. But that appeal to a friendship so grossly betrayed sent the hot blood to his head.

“I'll see you both a good deal farther than Peru before I give you a penny!” he said.

XXXIX

Nan slept. It was as if she had plunged down into unimaginable depths and then after a long time begun slowly, very slowly, to come up again. At first she might have been dead; she neither stirred nor was visited by any glimmer of consciousness. Then, when hours had passed, she moved, half woke, and was aware of an immense fatigue.

She slept again; but now she had a consciousness of trouble which took the form of one fitful dream after another. She was walking over a pebble beach, and the stones cut her feet. Her feet were bare, and the stones cut them. She could see her footprints like bloodstains stretching away on a vast unending shore.

She was looking for something, and she couldn't find it. She didn't know what she was looking for. She wasn't on the sea-shore any more. She was in London, but she was still barefoot and with only a chemise to cover her. She ran up Dover Street and down Hay Hill, and all round Piccadilly Circus, but she couldn't find what she wanted. And then all of a sudden she was on an endless moving staircase which went down and down and down, and carried her farther and farther away from the thing that she was straining to find. The stair went faster and faster. She was wet with her own tears, and Mr Page said in a loud, unfriendly voice, “You can't find him, because he's drowned;” Then she knew that she was looking for Jervis, and the dream broke.

Nan didn't wake with the breaking of the dream. She gave a sobbing cry that brought Bran to his feet: then she turned over and dreamed again.

She was in a dark place, and she was weeping bitterly. She covered her eyes to shut out the darkness, and she pressed her eyelids down to stop the tears, but they went on falling. Then there was light. It shone through her hands, and through her closed lids, and through her tears, and she looked and saw what she had seen once before in a dream. She saw wet stones, and Jervis lying on them, his head back and his eyes open as if he were dead. A wave of agony broke against her heart. She cried out in her sleep and woke, shuddering from head to foot.

She thought at first that the morning had come, because the room was full of light. She could see the door into Jervis' empty room, and she could see Bran reared up beside the bed, and the curtains drawn back at all the windows to let in as much air as possible. Everything was bright, and sharp, and clear for just that waking instant, and then the darkness and the thunder fell together in one appalling crash. Bran thrust against her. She flung her arms about him, and felt the deep rumble in his throat. There was a breathing-space before the next flash came, and then a long pause filled by a curious distant droning. The thunder was farther away.

Nan got out of bed. She had dreamed that dream twice; and the first time Jervis had come to her. Now she must go to him. She was quite sure of this. Her fatigue was gone, and the trouble in her mind was gone. She had gone to bed crushed down by the thought that Jervis and Rosamund were together. This had gone too. She only knew that she had to find Jervis. She dressed herself, putting on a thin dress and a waterproof over it. She shut Bran in the room and went down to the study.

She had unlatched the window, when a sudden thought turned her back to the writing-table. She found a block and pencil, and wrote, “I'm going to look for Jervis. I'm going to Mr Leonard's house first. I am quite sure he knows where Jervis is.” She folded the sheet, put it in an envelope, and addressed it to Ferdinand Fazackerley. Then she picked up an electric torch that was lying at the back of the table and went out of the long window, closing it behind her.

All this time she had been so intent that she could not have said whether the lightning and the thunder continued, but she stepped out into a sudden violet glare in which everything looked huge, and black, and blank. The trees were like forests of sea-weed under the ash of a phosphorescent sea. In the blackness that followed the flash she felt surrounded by strange things which she had never known before.

The thunder set her running. It was like a door banging behind her. She ran, and the wind that was blowing off the sea came up and carried her along. She had pushed the torch into the pocket of her rain-coat. Its little spark would be a glow-worm in the immense illumination which lit the sky and lit her path. It came and went, and came again, with a crash of enormous drums to hurry her on, and, between the drums, that strange droning note of the wind. It was all like a dream. There was the same certainty, the same consciousness of something with which reason had nothing to do. Nan had not thought of where she was going. She had known.

When she came into the deep lanes, the wind failed her, and the lightning showed it far overhead, twisting the tall branches of black trees a long way up in the air. The sound of it between the thunder claps was like the sound of an express train. She came out of the lanes and began to climb the road along the cliff, and here the storm caught her like a leaf. One veering gust seemed to lift her as if with wings, and another flung her against the bank and held her there bruised and impotent, until the breath was beaten out of her. Spray drenched her. She fell twenty times. She was near the sheer drop over the cliff, again and yet again; and then, just as she could fight no more, the wind would lift and carry her along.

She came to Robert Leonard's gate just as the rain broke, and the last flash of lightning showed her the house with its square ugliness and all its blank windows staring.