Gale Warning (19 page)

“What a sweet place,” said Audrey, and so it was. Indeed, I have often found that when Nature has taken over the work of men’s hands, the result can be as charming as any which she can achieve: and here the world was so still, and the air was so cool and so fragrant, and the heaven we could not see was dispensing so gentle a light that the spot might have been the retreat of some Titania, to which she sometimes retired, to stroll instead of flitting and speak in prose instead of in poetry.

It was now a few minutes past nine, and since I knew nothing of the country which lay between us and the spur, and had but a rough idea of where that protuberance hung, I took a good look at the sun and then led the way up what remained of some path, because it seemed to be leading the way which I thought we should go.

Broken and rough as it was, it served us well, for to tread it was not so hard as to climb the mountain-side, and, what was better still, it spared us the trying business of marking the way we went, because we had only to find it to know the way back to the car. And though, as a matter of fact, it took us out of our way, it brought us up to a plateau which no one could ever mistake, for there was the hollow trunk of some long-dead tree in which I shall always believe that some bear and her whelps had lodged.

The plateau was not very far from the actual top of the mountain on which we stood, and very soon after ten we gained the summit itself. Here we rested a little, whilst I surveyed the country, to find, if I could, some pointer to lead me down to the spur: and thanks to the view I had seen the day before, when I had been standing with Chandos directly above the dell, I was able to judge pretty well the line we should take.

So we began to go down and to bear to the right, and after forty minutes of by no means easy going – though Audrey did very well – I saw some movement below me, and there was Rowley waving, and making signs for us to bear to the left.

This very welcome direction brought us clean on the spur, and there was Richard Chandos talking to Bell, who was mending his master’s trousers with needle and thread.

“Which is absurd,” said Audrey. “Richard, my dear, take them off and give them to me. And while I’m doing my best, you shall give us your news.”

“But I can’t do that,” said Chandos, “I’ve nothing else to put on.”

“Don’t be a fool,” said my lady, “but do as I say. I’m going to look at Midian: and when I come back, those trousers have got to be ready for me to start.” She stooped to examine the tear. “Dear God, you’ve torn your leg, too. How did you do this?”

“Barbed wire, my lady,” said Bell. “And he won’t have it touched.”

Audrey gave him her handkerchief.

“Find a rill,” she said. “And soak this and bring it back.” She returned to Chandos. “I’ll give you two minutes,” she said. “ If Jenny were here, she’d have torn them off you by now.”

I took her to look at Midian, ablaze in the mid-day sun. Perhaps because of this, the terrace was now deserted, and though we used my glasses we saw no movement at all.

“Later, perhaps,” I said shortly, and got to my feet. Audrey made no answer, but as she stood up, she swayed, and I had just time to catch her, before she fell.

I laid her down where she was, plucked two or three handfuls of grass, which because it grew in the shade was still very wet, and laid the blades on her temples and pushed them beneath her neck.

Then I saw that her eyes were open and fast upon me.

“Sorry, St John,” she said quietly. And then, “I’m so glad it was you.”

I took her fingers and kissed them and felt them close upon mine.

So we stayed for a moment – she lying flat, and I on my knees by her side.

Then—

“Girls will be girls,” she said, “but I’m all right now.”

With that, she got to her feet.

“Are you sure, my darling?” said I.

“Quite sure.” She blew me a kiss. “And now let me get at Richard. Men will be men, I suppose, but he’s got a wound in his thigh about four inches long.”

With her iodine pencil, she made a good job of the gash: then she pulled poor Bell’s stitches out and fell to mending the trousers in a most professional way: and while she worked, I watched her, and Chandos told us his tale.

“As luck will have it,” he said, “we were able to cross the water a bit higher up. It meant getting wet, but no more. Two hundred yards up-stream the water comes round in a bend, and there is a natural lasher – a horse-shoe fall. Just there the torrent’s much wider: and so, of course, it’s not so deep or so strong. And the pool beneath the fall is as safe as a house – smooth, straightforward water, and hardly a rock.

“Well, we got across by moonlight, and then we started down-stream on the other side. This was rather a business, for after a bit the woods gave way to the cliff. You see what I mean. For about a hundred yards we simply climbed along the face of a pretty steep slope, which was covered with trees: but then the slope got steeper with every yard, till at last it was just a cliff and there weren’t any trees.

“Well, we’d got some hanks of cord, and day was beginning to break, so we took to the water again and hoped for the best. One tied a cord under one’s arms and chucked the rest of it over the bough of a tree. Then Carson took hold of the line and paid it out, as though he were playing a fish. For the first ten yards or so the going was pretty rough – rocks all over the place, and the current trying to bang you against the face of the cliff: you see, you couldn’t swim and you couldn’t walk: you had to half float and half clamber – the sort of progress which I think a seal would enjoy. And then, without any warning, our luck came in.

“I was hanging on to some rock which I couldn’t see when I lost my hold and was carried under water against the cliff. I’d just time to shove out a hand to take the bump, and the moment I touched, I knew I was up against something that wasn’t pure cliff. In fact it was masonry.

“And now let’s go back for a moment.

“From what I’ve said you will gather that the current is setting strong against the foot of the cliff above which Midian is built. That means that in course of time that cliff will be undermined, because all the force of the water is bearing upon its face. I believe the right word’s ‘erosion’… Now either Barabbas or some former owner of Midian has been put wise to this, and so
beneath the water
the cliff has been reinforced. It may have been done at the end of some summer drought, when the river would be much lower than it is now. In any event, it’s been done: and, what is more, the work has been done very well. They haven’t just patched the cliff where the cliff was worn: they’ve built out beyond the cliff, the way you build your footings before you set up a wall. Which means there’s a ledge under water – for all I know, the whole way along its face. Four feet below the surface: no more than that. You can walk along it keeping one hand on the cliff.

“With such a place to jump off from, the cliff is nothing at all. With five or six dogs, it’ll be like walking upstairs. They’re being made now, I hope: and we’re going to place them tonight.”

“Dogs?” said Audrey.

“Pieces of iron,” said Chandos, “the shape of the letter E, but without the prong. They’ve got a point at each end. Drive one into a cliff, and it makes you a rung. That’s the best of water. If it’s singing loud enough, it covers what noise you make.”

“But, once they’re placed, won’t anyone be able to see them?”

“I don’t think so,” said Chandos. “You see, the cliff isn’t bare, and I think they’ll melt into the general colour scheme. Then again they’ll be jacketed with rubber – grey, rubber tubing, the same sort of shade as the cliff.”

“You don’t forget anything, do you? But didn’t you find that water terribly cold?”

Chandos smiled.

“It was a bit cold,” he said: “but after a while, you know, you don’t notice it much. But I was damned glad of that ledge. I can’t believe Barabbas knows that it’s there. I mean, with your feet upon that, you’re practically home.”

“Fortune favours the bold.”

“I ran no risk,” said Chandos. “The line was round my chest, and Carson was ready and waiting to haul me in.”

For all that, there can be no doubt that only a lion-hearted man would have entered that icy water, thereby committing himself to a mercy it did not know, and have fought and won his battle against its pace and its might. But I think it is true to say that neither Mansel nor Chandos knew any fear, or that, if they did, they had reduced that emotion to full obedience.

It may seem out of reason that danger should have been courted and efforts so bold have been made, when the terrace could have been reached by walking over some meadows and climbing a six-foot wall: but, though that way was inviting, I think we all of us knew that there was about it some ‘snag’; for Barabbas was not the man to select so secure a retreat, yet not deny admittance to such as might seek to gain it without being seen or heard. And here, as we afterwards found, we were perfectly right, for Midian was girt with a system of almost invisible wire, which only had to be touched to give the alarm. But the balustrade was not wired, but was left in the charge of the cliff and the water below.

That evening Mansel went with us, to see where the Lowland lay – “not,” said he, “that I don’t trust you, but because, when you’ve split your party, your right hand should always know what your left hand does.”

He seemed well pleased with our lair, but told us not to go back by the way we had come, but to go on over the saddle and make our way back to Castelly by using some lower roads.

“I’m looking ahead,” he said. “If anything should happen at Midian, it is of the highest importance that no one should think about you. I don’t think they will – for a moment. But peasants have eyes the same as anyone else and, as I daresay you’ve noticed, the cars on these roads are few.”

Audrey was very quiet.

She had looked upon Midian that morning, as I have said. But she never went back to the view-point, to look again. (In fact, there was little to see. Plato appeared, and Barabbas, for half an hour: but they seemed to have business within, for most of the afternoon the women whom we had seen had the sunlit flags to themselves.) Indeed, since noon she had hardly opened her mouth, although she had sat and listened to all that was said. But, as we sailed into the evening, her spirits seemed to rise, and before we had come to Castelly, she was herself again.

After an early supper, she said we must go for a stroll, and we walked out into the evening, with our backs to the way we knew. Five minutes were more than enough to take us out of the village and into a countryside which belonged to another age, where sights and sounds were the stuff old days were made of and Husbandry had on the livery Thomson knew. The neat-herd’s pan-pipes, the brooks, and the swaths of the hand-mown hay; the yokes of patient oxen, and the snoods that the women wore; the play of a waterwheel, and a little school of goslings, taking the air – of such was our kingdom that evening, high up in a mountain valley, from which the shrewd eye of Progress had turned aside. Young and old gave us ‘Good evening,’ as though they knew who we were: and I think it likely they did, for Castelly was very small, and Audrey’s light was too rare for a bushel to hide it away.

Something woke me that night – or, rather, the following morning at half-past three. It may well have been the moonlight, of which our bedroom was full.

At once I turned to see if Audrey was sleeping: but Audrey’s bed was empty, the clothes turned back.

For one frantic moment I think that my heart stood still… And then I saw her standing – a slight, pyjama-clad figure, by the side of an open window, staring into the night.

I was out of bed by now, and I stepped to her side.

“What is it, Madonna?” I breathed.

She did not turn, but she set a hand on my shoulder and held it tight.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she said.

“But you mustn’t stand here, my darling. This is the coldest moment of all the twenty-four hours.”

“I’m all right, St John. This silk’s very thick.”

“You must go back to bed, my sweet: or else you must let me get you your dressing-gown.”

“Very well. I’ll go back to bed.”

I stooped and touched her bare feet: they might have been cut out of marble, they were so cold.

“How long have you been here?” I said.

“I don’t know. Perhaps twenty minutes.”

I picked her up in my arms, walked across the parquet and laid her down in my bed.

As I set the clothes about her—

“You must sleep here,” I said. “Your sheets will be cold. Put your feet right down, and I’ll make them warm.”

First I took a silk scarf I had and bound it about my waist. Then I knelt at the foot of the bed and loosened the clothes. Then I put in my hands and chafed her feet and her ankles, until they began to grow warm. Then I took the scarf, now warm, and wrapped them in that.

As I tucked the clothes back—

“Come here, St John,” said Audrey.

I went to the head of the bed.

“Listen,” said Audrey. “They said that tonight they were going back to the cliff, to place the dogs.”

I nodded.

“Was that…the whole truth?”

I opened my eyes.

“Why not?”

“I’m…so afraid…they meant to do…more than that…”

As some electric current, the sentence made me unable to speak or move.

Audrey continued slowly.

“You see…it stands to reason…they’d like to – get it over…before I knew.”

I put a hand to my head and moistened my lips.

“Yes, I see that,” I said. “But I think you can rest assured that it hasn’t been done tonight. Mansel himself arranged that we should be at the spur tomorrow – today at noon. And that he would never allow, if something had happened at Midian ten hours before.”

“We may get a message this morning to tell us to stay where we are.”

“Never,” said I, firmly. “A message of any sort would link you up with the crime.”

Audrey considered this, with her underlip caught in her teeth.

At length—

“Yes, I think that’s sound,” she said. She sighed, as though with relief. “What a comfort you are, St John. And thank you so very much for putting me in your bed and chafing my feet. I’m so nice and warm again now.” She sat up suddenly. “And now, of course, you’re all cold. And my bed is like ice.”