Nothing Venture (23 page)

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I'm not—used—to anyone—minding about me.”

She looked round at him then with something in her eyes which blotted out everything that he had thought or believed about her before this night. It was something quite impossible to mistake. There were tears in her eyes, and behind the tears a shining.

He got up in confusion, went over to the washstand, poured out a glass of water, and came back with it in his hand. Nan took it gratefully, but her hand shook. He found himself guiding it. She drank about half the water and gave him the glass again. When she spoke, it was in her natural voice.

“Thank you, Jervis.” Then, after the slightest pause, “I'm all right now—it's gone.” She threw out her hand with a childish gesture. “Oh, isn't it lovely when bad dreams go like that?”

“It's quite gone?”

“Yes.”

“Can you go to sleep again?”

She said, “I'll read.”

“Have you got a book?”

“Yes.”

He stood there, not knowing quite what to do. He felt as if he had never seen her before, and yet as if he had known her all his life.

He said, “Nan,” in a tone which she had not heard from him before.

She pushed back her hair and smiled at him.

“I'm
really
all right now. I'm dreadfully sorry I woke you.”

“Would you like me to leave the door open?”

“Oh no—I've got Bran.”

A perfectly absurd anger flared up in him. She'd got Bran, had she? Well, let her have Bran! He certainly hadn't the slightest desire to force himself upon her. He frowned, said good-night in a stiffly polite voice, and strode to the door. As he shut it, he caught a glimpse of her settling herself against her pillows.

His room seemed very dark. He went over to the bed and sat on the edge of it, watching the line of light under the door through which he had just come. His spirit of anger died. He was moved and puzzled. He could not remember anyone having cried for him before. It moved him a good deal that Nan should have cried for him this afternoon. She had sat on the dusty grass and cried because she thought he was dead. It was an astonishing thing to have happened; and yet it was less astonishing and less moving than the look which she had given him just now. When he thought about that look of Nan's, a sort of piercing sweetness and warmth penetrated to the very depths of his consciousness. He was quite unable to think clearly about it, or, indeed, to think about it at all. The whole experience was as yet a matter of feeling; it had not been transmuted into thought.

He sat quite still for a long time, watching the line of light beneath the door. When at last it went out, he got up, stretched himself, and got into bed. He lay on his right side and watched the moonlight. The moon was not full, and the light was pale, not bright. The window framed it, and one black bough of the tall cypress at the corner of the house; the bough crossed the window like an outstretched arm. He lay looking at it, and all the time that warm sweetness pierced deeper and deeper. He began to slip away from the moonlight into a more enchanted place. There was a dream waiting for him—a warm, sweet dream, full of colour and light. But when he had almost reached it, something pulled him back.

He woke with one of those violent starts which come on the edge of sleep. In a moment he was out of bed and at the door between his room and Nan's. It opened on a dark room peaceful with sleep. He said her name under his breath, but there was no answer except the faint thudding of Bran's tail upon the floor. He frowned in the dark and shut the door.

As he turned and stood for a moment facing the window, something came through it and hit the floor with a sharp rap. It sounded like a pebble. He went to the window and looked out. It faced towards the drive. The curving belt of trees took the moon. The sky was luminous over them, the moon itself unseen. The shadow of the cypress was black upon the house. The blackness made a pool beneath him as he leaned out.

Out of the blackness someone said his name.

XXX

“Jervis—”

Jervis stared into the black pool of shadow under the window. Instead of waking up he must have walked straight into the maddest dream. He said,

“Who's there?”

“Jervis—” said Rosamund Carew.

It was Rosamund—of course it was Rosamund. But it could only be Rosamund in one of those dreams which turn everything topsy turvy and hurry you from one absurdity to another. “
Rosamund!
” he said.

“For the Lord's sake don't go shouting out my name like that!”

“I wasn't shouting.”

He could just see her now—or rather, not her, but a shadow that moved, amongst other shadows that were still. Then she turned her face up to the window, and he could see it like a pale oval reflection in dark water.

“Jervis—I'm in a hole. Can you come down?”

“What is it?”

“I'll tell you if you come down. Don't wake anyone.”

He hesitated, frowning furiously. What was this all about? He turned his wrist and looked at the luminous dial of his watch. It was two o'clock. What on earth was Rosamund playing at?

“Jervis. I'm in a perfectly damnable hole.”

He said, “All right—wait a minute,” and turned back into the room.

He got into some clothes—a tennis shirt, flannel trousers, blazer, socks, and shoes. Then he went down to the study, opened the window, and got out.

Rosamund was waiting for him.

“What's the matter?” he said.

“My car broke down.”

“Where?”

“About three miles away, on the main road.”

“Well, I'll knock up Mrs Mellish. She'll have a room got ready for you.”

“No—no—I don't want to do that.” She came quite close and put a hand on his arm. “I want to get back. Mabel Tetterley doesn't know I'm out.”

“What have you been up to?” said Jervis.

“That's not your business.”

“What do you want me to do?” said Jervis angrily.

“Make less noise to start with, and then lend a hand with the car.”

“What's the trouble?”

“I've ditched her. We could get her out together, but I can't budge her alone, and there isn't likely to be anyone passing for the next four hours or so.”

Jervis did not know what prompted him to say,

“You're alone?”

“Well, would I come and dig you out in the middle of the night if I wasn't? I don't walk three miles in evening shoes for fun.”

“All right I'll get the car out and run you back.”

Rosamund's hand closed on his arm—a strong hand for all its whiteness.

“No, you can't do that—it'll give the whole show away.”

“What is there to give away?” said Jervis.

“Well, to be quite frank,” said Rosamund, “I can't afford another scandal on the top of turning you down. It isn't all jam as it is. Mabel's under Basher's thumb, though you wouldn't think it. Basher's a prude of the first water when it comes to his own womenfolk. If he knew I'd been out all night, he'd never have me in the house again.”

“And it's not my business where you've been?”

“Well—is it?”

“How can you get back without someone finding out?”

“It's as easy as mud. The second chauffeur sleeps over the garage. You couldn't wake him if you drove a lorry through the room. I've got a key, and I can take her in the same way I took her out, without anyone being a penny the wiser.”

So she couldn't have gone out much before midnight. Queer business this. He felt an impatience to get quit of it.

“Well, we'd better be getting along,” he said.

Rosamund moved, let go of his arm, and stepped out of the shadow. The moonlight touched her uncovered head and took all the gold out of her hair. It looked grey with threads of silver in it. Her face, her hands, and the column of her throat were like ivory seen through water. She was wrapped in a black Chinese shawl whose embroidered flowers were like faint ghosts whose colour and sweetness have died and been forgotten.

She moved beside him, walking quickly and in silence. She could keep pace with him without effort. She produced, as always, an effect of graceful ease which was in sharp contrast to the habitual bluntness of her speech. She did not speak now until they were past the gates. Then she said in a mocking voice,

“Don't you want to know where I've been?”

“Not particularly.”

“No wonder I jilted you! You don't care who I've been meeting?”

“Why should I?”

“Do you?”

“No, I don't.”

“No healthy curiosity?”

“I'd like to know what you're driving at.”

“I'd like to know myself,” said Rosamund, her voice harsh on the words.

They walked on without speaking for a couple of hundred yards. Then Jervis said,

“Are you going to marry Leonard?”

“Should you mind if I did?”

“Not in the least. But I should think twice before I did it if I were you.”

“Why?” said Rosamund.

“The man's an outsider.”

“Thank you—he's my cousin!”

“Everyone's got some dud relations. Are you going to marry him?”

“No,” said Rosamund.

“Well, that's damned sensible of you.”

Rosamund moved a little farther away from him.

“You've made such a sensible marriage yourself—haven't you?”

Jervis said nothing. Quite suddenly, when she said that, he saw Nan as he had seen her settling back against her tossed pillows; her rumpled hair, soft and brown; her little tremulous smile; her eyes clear shining after rain. Sensible? That wasn't the word for the marriage that had brought Nan into his life. Who wanted to make a sensible marriage? He had taken a leap in the dark, and it had landed him in a place of extraordinary enchantment. You weren't sensible in an enchanted place. He threw back his head and laughed. What a jest fate had played on him! What a gorgeous, rollicking, enchanting jest! Gusts of laughter shook him. He wanted someone to share it with him. But he couldn't very well share it with Rosamund. It was just like fate to thrust Rosamund upon him at this juncture.

She had got right away on to the other side of the road. They had reached a bend where half a dozen wind-driven thorn trees stood above the hedge on one side and a row of elms cast a dense shadow across the road from the other.

“Here's the car,” said Rosamund.

“We haven't come three miles.”

“It felt like four in these shoes.”

The road dipped into the shadow. The car stood in at an angle towards the hedge. The place was as black as overhanging boughs could make it.

“You ought to have left your lights on,” said Jervis.

Rosamund didn't answer. He heard her move, but he couldn't see her.

He opened the door of the car and leaned forward to switch on the lights.

XXXI

Nan came early to breakfast, and Ferdinand Fazackerley late, with his red hair sticky and rumpled from the sea. He had made some attempt to brush it, but except for the colour it looked a good deal like the coat of a Scotch terrier. Jervis did not come to breakfast at all.

“Alfred says he went out early,” said Ferdinand over his bacon. “It's going to be hotter than ever, so I guess he's wiser to get through with anything strenuous before the thermometer breaks.”

By eleven o'clock Alfred was being questioned.

“Did Mr Weare say he was going to be late?”

“No, ma'am.”

“Well, did he say where he was going?”

“No, sir.”

“Did he say anything at all, Alfred?”

“No, ma'am.”

“Well, did you see which way he went?”

Alfred looked agonized. He was a shy lad with a strong objection to committing himself.

“No, sir.”

Nan made a flashing guess.

“Did you see him at all, Alfred?”

“No, ma'am, I can't say I did.”

“He wasn't there when you went to wake him?”

“No, ma'am, I can't say he was.”

There wasn't anything more to be said. It was the most ordinary thing in the world for Jervis to get up and go out before the servants were afoot. He would go down to the sea for a swim at three in the morning if the fancy took him. Since Nan had been at King's Weare he had been out every morning. Once he had walked into Croyston and breakfasted there because he wanted to see a man about a deal in sheep. He might have done the same thing again, and he would certainly be frightfully angry if he were pursued by fussy inquiries.

Lunch time passed. Ferdinand and Nan sat down half an hour late. Nan found it difficult to eat, but she would have found it still more difficult to refuse what was offered to her, because that would mean that there was a reason why she should not be able to eat. She ate therefore with determination. Everything seemed to require a great deal of biting, and nothing had any taste. It was like eating lumps of sawdust.

At four o'clock she got up from her chair as Ferdinand came into the library, and went to meet him. When they met, she looked at him, and then looked quickly away.

“We've got to do something,” she said.

“Well, what do you want to do?”

“I don't know. I'm—frightened.”

“Oh, I wouldn't be frightened.”

“He'd never stay away like this—
would
he?”

“Well—he might. But we'll do some ringing up and see if we can't get him. If he went into Croyston, he'd go to the George.”

Jervis had not been to the George, nor to any of the other places that they tried. They rang up the Tetterleys, and Rosamund answered.

“Did you want Mabel? She's away. She and Basher went off last night to put in a couple of days with his sister. Jervis? No, he hasn't been here. Has he gone off? Well, he does, you know—he always has. I expect he's forgotten he's married. I shouldn't ask too many questions if I were you—he won't like it.” She laughed. “That's putting it mildly! When you've known Jervis as long as I have—”