“All right. I didn’t think you’d be down here again so soon. It was touch and go whether I could get here.”
“Piggy’s orders,” said Henry. “Look here, Tony, don’t let’s go inside. It’s a topping night, and that passage I’ve just come along smells like a triple extract of vaults—perfectly beastly. I don’t suppose our friend Ember is addicted to being out late. He doesn’t strike me as that sort of bird somehow.”
“All right,” said Anthony Luttrell. He sat down on the stone seat as he spoke, and Henry followed his example.
“Piggy sent you down, did he? What for?”
Henry was silent. It seemed like quite a long time before he said:
“Tony, who knows about the passages beside you and me?”
“No one,” said Anthony shortly.
“Uncle James told me when he thought the Boche had done you in. He said then that no one knew except he and I. He drew out a plan of all the passages and made me learn it by heart. When I could draw it with my eyes shut, we burnt every scrap of paper I had touched. I’ve been into the passages exactly three times—once that same week to test my knowledge, again the other day, and to-night. I’ll swear no one saw me go in or come out, and I’ll swear I’ve never breathed a word to a soul.”
“Are you rehearsing your autobiography?” inquired Anthony Luttrell, with more than a hint of sarcasm.
“No, I’m not. I want to know who else knows about the passages.”
“And I have told you.”
“Tony, it is no good. I had my suspicions the other night, but to-night I’ve got proof. The passages have been made use of. Unfortunately there’s no doubt about it at all. I want to know whether you have any idea—hang it all, Tony, you must see what I’m driving at! Wait a minute; don’t go through the roof until you’ve heard what I’ve got to say. You see, I know that Uncle James gave you the plan when you were only sixteen, because he thought he was dying then, and I’ve come down here to ask you whether any one might have seen you coming and going as a boy, or whether ... Tony,didyou ever tell any one?”
“I thought you said that it was Piggy’s orders that brought you down here.”
“Yes, it was,” said Henry.
“Am I to gather then that Piggy has suggested these damned impertinent questions?” Mr. Luttrell’s tone was easy to a degree.
Henry, on the verge of losing his temper, rose abruptly to his feet, walked half a dozen paces with his hands shoved well down in his pockets, and then walked back again.
“Tony, what on earth’s the good of quarrelling?”
Anthony Luttrell was leaning back, his head against the back of the stone seat, his long legs stretched out in front of him. He appeared to be watching the race of clouds between the horizon and the zenith. He said something, and the wind took his words away.
Henry sat down again.
“Look here, Tony,” he said, “you’ve not answered my question. Did you ever tell any one? Damn it all, Tony, I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t have to!... Did you ever tell Raymond?”
A great gust swept the headland, another and more violent one followed it, battered against the cliff, and then dropped suddenly into what, after the tumult, seemed like a silence.
“Piggy speaking, or you?” said Anthony Luttrell quite lightly.
“Both,” said Henry.
“You sound heated, Henry. Now I should have thought that that would have been my rôle. Instead, I merely repeat to you, and you in your turn, of course, repeat to Piggy that I have told no one about the passages, and, after you have admired my moderation, perhaps we might change the subject.”
“I’m afraid it can’t be done,” said Henry. “Tony, do you mind sitting up and looking at this?”
As he spoke he placed “this” on the seat between them and turned a light upon it, holding the torch close down on to the seat so that the beam did not travel beyond its edge. Mr. Luttrell turned lazily and saw a small handkerchief of very fine linen with an embroidered “R” in the corner. He continued to look at it, and Henry continued to hold the torch so that the light fell upon the initial. Then quite suddenly Anthony Luttrell reached sideways and switched off the light. His hand dropped to the handkerchief and covered it.
“No, I don’t want it,” said Henry, “but I thought you ought to know that I found it in the passage behind us, just where one stoops to shift the stone.”
“It’s one I found and dropped,” said Anthony, putting it into his pocket.
Henry said nothing at all.
A somewhat prolonged silence was broken by Luttrell. “I’m chucking my job here,” he said. “I’ve written to Sir Julian. Here’s the letter for you to give him.” He pushed it along the seat as he spoke, and Henry picked it up reluctantly. “I’ve asked to be replaced with as little delay as possible. You might urge that point on him, if you don’t mind. I want it made perfectly clear that under no circumstances will I stay on more than three days. I will, in fact, see the whole department damned first.”
He spoke without the slightest heat, in the rather cold, drawling manner which Henry had known as a danger-signal from the days when he was a small boy, and Anthony a big one and his idol.
“Are you giving any reason?”
“No, there’s no reason to give.”
“Piggy,” said Henry thoughtfully, “will want one. It’s all very well for you, Tony, to write him a letter and say you’re going to chuck your job without giving a reason. I’ve got to stand up at the other side of his table and stick out a cross-examination on the probable nature of the reasons which you haven’t given. You’re putting me in an impossible position.”
“It’s that damned conscience of yours, I suppose! I cannot tell a lie, and all that sort of thing.”
“Not to Piggy about this.”
“All right,” said Anthony, getting to his feet, “tell him the truth. Why should I care? I suppose, in common with everybody else, he is perfectly well aware that I once made a fool of myself about Lady Heritage. Well, I thought I could stick being down here and seeing her, but I can’t. It just comes to that. I can’t stick it.”
“Does she know you’re here?”
“No, she doesn’t. She sees me in an overall and a mask. She has been pleased to commend my skill. This afternoon she leaned over my shoulder to watch what I was doing. Well, I came away and wrote to Piggy. I can’t stand it, and you can tell him so with the utmost circumstance.”
Henry was leaning forward, chin in hand. He looked past Anthony at the black moving water.
“Why don’t you see Raymond?” he said. “No, Tony, you’ve just got to listen to me. What you’ve been saying is true as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go very far. You wouldn’t chuck your job just for that. You know, and I know that you’re chucking it because you are afraid that Raymond is involved. If you know it, and I know it, don’t you think Piggy will know it too? That’s why I say, see Raymond. If she’s let herself get mixed up with this show, it’s because she’s had a rotten time and wants to hit back. She said as much to me—oh, not à propos of this, of course; we were just talking.”
“I heard her,” said Anthony Luttrell. He paused, and added with a distinct sneer, “You displayed an admirable discretion.”
“Thank you, Tony. Now what’s the good of you clearing out? If you do, Piggy will send some one else down here, and if Raymond has got mixed up with any of Ember’s devilry, she’ll get caught out. For the Lord’s sake, Tony, see her, let her know you’re alive! I believe she’d chuck the whole thing and go to the ends of the earth with you. Nobody would press the matter. We should catch Ember out, and you and Raymond could go abroad for a bit. I don’t see any other way out of it.”
“You seem to me to be assuming a good deal, Henry,” said Anthony Luttrell.
“I’m not assuming anything”—Henry’s tone was very blunt. “I know three things.”
“Yes?”
“One”—Henry ticked his facts off on the fingers of his left hand: “the passages are being used. Two: they’ve been wired for electric light. Three: Raymond has been through them, and quite lately. Those three facts, taken in conjunction with a deposition stating that something of a highly dangerous and anti-social nature is being manufactured on these premises, and under cover of the Government experiments—well, Tony, I don’t suppose you want me to dot the ‘i’s’ and cross the ‘t’s.’”
“It never occurred to you that my father might have had the place wired, I suppose?”
“He didn’t,” said Henry. “It’s no good, Tony. You can’t bluff me, and I hate your trying to. There’s only one way out of this. You’ve got to see Raymond.”
Anthony made an impatient movement.
“You assume too much,” he said, “but I’ll put that on one side. From the cold, official standpoint, where does my interview with Lady Heritage come in? Wouldn’t it rather complicate matters? You appear to assume that there is a conspiracy, and then to suggest that I should warn one of the conspirators.”
“No, I do not. I ask you to let Raymond know that you are alive, nothing more. In my view nothing more is necessary. She’ll naturally think you are here to see her, and you can let her think so. As to the cold, official standpoint, the last thing that the department would want is a scandal about a woman in Raymond’s position. Piggy would say what I say—for the Lord’s sake get her out of it and let us have a free hand. She’s an appalling complication.”
“Women always are,” said Anthony Luttrell in his bitter drawl.
He moved a pace or two away, and then turned back again. “You’re not a bad sort in spite of the conscience, Henry,” he said. “From your standpoint, what you’ve just said is sense—good, plain common sense—in fact, exactly the thing which one has no use for in certain moods.”
“Scrap the moods, Tony,” said Henry, in an expressionless voice.
Anthony laughed, rather harshly.
“My good Henry,” he said—there was affection as well as mockery in his tone—“does one ask for one’s temperament? Look here, I haven’t seen Raymond because I haven’t dared—I don’t know what I might do or say if I did see her. Now that is the plain, unvarnished truth. When I was in Petrograd I once hid for three days in a cellar with a temperamental Russian lady. There was nothing to do except to talk, and we talked endlessly. She told me a lot of home truths—said my nature was like a glacier, cold and slow, and that once I had got going I had to go on, even if I ground all my own dearest hopes to powder in doing so.”
“In other words, if you’ve got a grouch, you’re a devil to keep it,” said Henry. “It’s quite true; you always were. But, look here, Tony, why all this to my address? Why not get it off your chest to Raymond, and if youwilldeal in geological parallels, well—she’s rather in the volcano line, or used to be, and I don’t mind betting she’ll blow your glacier to smithereens?” Henry looked at his watch.
“I must go,” he said. “Think it over, Tony, and same place, to-morrow, same time.”
He turned, without waiting for an answer, and walked into the darkness of the cave.
Jane went to her room that night, but she did not undress. Two entirely opposite lines of reasoning had ended in inducing one and the same decision. On the one hand, it might be argued that Lady Heritage and Mr. Ember, having passed the greater part of last night abroad upon their mysterious business, would be most unlikely to spend a second sleepless night so soon, and Jane might, therefore, count on finding the coast clear for a little exploring on her own account. On the other hand, an equally logical train of thought suggested that these midnight comings and goings might be part of a routine, and that Jane, if on the watch, might acquire some very valuable information.
She therefore locked her door and proceeded to consider the question of what she should wear with as much attention as if she had been going to a ball. Neither barefoot nor with only stockings would she go into any passage which had left those unpleasant dark stains upon Lady Heritage’s overall. A really heartfelt shudder passed over her at the very idea. No, Renata possessed slippers of maroon felt. Misguided talent had stenciled upon the toe of one a Dutch boy in full trousers, and upon the toe of the other a Dutch girl in full petticoats. Jane had a fierce loathing for the slippers, but they had cork soles and would at once keep out the damp and be very silent. She therefore placed them in readiness.
Prolonged hesitation between the claims of the crimson flannel dressing-gown and an aged blue serge dress resulted in a final selection of the latter. She decided that it would flap less, and that if it got stained and damp the housemaids would be less likely to notice it.
“Of course, on the other hand,” said Jane to herself, “if I’m caught, it absolutely does in any excuse about walking in my sleep, but I don’t think that’s an earthly, anyhow. If I’m caught, they’ll jolly well know what I was doing. The thing is not to be caught.”
At half-past eleven precisely she made her way down to the hall.
To-night there was no patch of moonlight to pass through, only a vague greyness which showed that the moon had risen and that the clouds outside were thin enough to let some of the light filter through.
Jane felt her way downstairs and across the hall to Sir William’s study. The study door afforded the nearest point from which she could watch what she called Willoughby Luttrell’s corner without exposing herself to detection.
She made up her mind that she would wait until she heard twelve strike, and then explore the corner. She had so thoroughly planned a period of waiting that it was with a feeling of shocked surprise that she became aware, even as she reached and crossed the threshold of the study, that some one was coming down the stairs behind her.
If she had been one moment later, if she had stayed, as she very nearly did stay, to look out of the window and see whether the night was fair, they would have walked into one another at the top of the stairs. As it was, she had escaped by the very narrowest margin.
The door opened inwards, and she had just time to get behind it and close all but a crack, when through that crack she saw Raymond Heritage pass, wrapped in the same black cloak which she had worn the night before, only this time she wore beneath it, not her linen overall, but the dress she had worn for dinner. She held an electric lamp in her left hand.
As soon as she had passed the door, Jane opened it a little wider and came forward a step.
Lady Heritage went straight to the corner of the hall. She put the torch down upon a chair which stood immediately under Willoughby Luttrell’s portrait. Then she went quite close to the wall and reached up, with her arms stretched out widely. Her right hand touched the bottom left-hand corner of the portrait and her left rested in the angle of the corner.
Jane heard the same click which she had heard the night before.
Lady Heritage stepped back, took up her light, and, going to the corner, pushed hard against the wall.
Jane watched with all her eyes, and saw a section of the panelling turn on some unseen pivot, leaving a narrow door through which Raymond passed. For a moment she stared at the lighter oblong in the wall; then there was a second click and the unbroken shadow once again.
Tingling with excitement, Jane stepped from her doorway and came to the corner. She must, oh she must, find the spring, and find it in time to follow. Raymond stood here and reached up, but she was tall, much taller than Jane. She stood on her tiptoes and could not reach the lowest edge of the portrait.
With the very greatest of care she moved the chair that was under the picture a yard or two to the left. It weighed as though it were made of lead instead of oak, and she was gasping as she set it down, but she had made no noise. Renata’s cork soles slipped as she climbed on to the polished seat, but she gripped the solid back and did not fall.
Raymond had pressed something in the wall with both hands at once. Jane began to feel carefully along the lower edge of the portrait until she came to the massively foliated corner with its fat gilt acanthus leaves. A cross-piece of the panelling came just on the same level. She felt along it with light, sensitive finger-tips. There was a knot in the wood, but nothing else. “If there is another knot in the corner, I’ll try pressing on them,” she thought to herself, and on the instant her left hand found the second knot. She pressed with all her might, and for the third time that evening she heard the little scarcely audible click. This time it spelt victory.
In a curiously methodical manner Jane got down, put the chair carefully back into its place, and pushed against the wall as she had seen Lady Heritage do. The panelling yielded to her hand and swung inwards.
There was a black gap in the corner. Jane passed through it without any hesitation, and pulled the panelling to. She meant to leave it just ajar, but her hand must have shaken, or else there was some controlling spring, for as she stood in the black dark she heard the click again. She drew a long breath and stood motionless for a moment, but only for a moment. She had come there to follow Raymond Heritage, and follow her she would.
She put out a cautious foot and it went down, so far down that for a sickening instant she thought that she must overbalance and fall headlong; then, just in time, it touched a step, the first of ten which went down very steeply. At the bottom she felt her way round a corner, and then with intensest thankfulness she saw, a good way ahead, a moving figure with a light.
The passage that stretched before her was about six feet high and four feet wide. The air felt very damp and heavy. At intervals there were openings on the left-hand side where other passages seemed to branch off. Jane began to have a growing horror of these other passages. If she lost Lady Heritage, how would she ever find her way back, and—yet more horrid thought—who, or what, might at any moment come out of one of those dark tunnels behind her? It was at this point that she began to run, only to check herself severely. “She’ll hear you, you fool. Jane, I absolutely forbid you to be such a fool; and Renata’s slippers will come off if you run, nasty sloppy things, and then you’ll tread in green slime, and get it between all your toes.It will squelch.” The horror of the black passages was eclipsed; Jane stopped running obediently, but she took longer steps and diminished the distance between herself and her unconscious guide.
The passage had begun to run uphill. Jane wondered where they were going. At any moment Lady Heritage might turn. If she did so, Jane must infallibly be caught unless she were near enough to one of the side tunnels. She went on with her heart in her mouth.
A line from one of Christina Rossetti’s poems came into her head:
“Does the road wind uphill all the way?Yes, to the very end.”
“Does the road wind uphill all the way?
Yes, to the very end.”
“The sort of cheery thing onewouldremember,” thought Jane to herself; and she continued to climb the endless slope, her eyes fixed on the dark, moving silhouette of Lady Heritage.
At last there was a pause. The light ceased to move. Jane crept closer, but dared not come too near. Next moment she saw what looked like a slab of stone in the passage wall swing round on a pivot as the panelling had done. Lady Heritage passed out of sight through the opening, and at the same moment a great breath of wind from the sea drove into the passage, clear, fresh, exquisite.
Jane hurried to the opening and looked out. She saw first the dark, curving walls of a small cave, and, immediately in front of her, the black outline of a bench, beyond that a stretch of uneven ground, a tangle of wire, and the black movement of the sea. The moon behind the clouds made a vague, dusky twilight, and the wind blew. Lady Heritage was standing just on the other side of the stone seat. It startled Jane to find that she was so near. She stood quite still looking at the shadowed water and the cloudy sky.
Then, without any warning, a tall, dark figure came into sight. To Jane it seemed as if it rose out of the ground. Afterwards she thought that, if any one had been sitting on the grass and then had risen, it would, of course, have looked like that. At the time she leaned against the rock for support and had much ado not to scream.
It was Lady Heritage who called out, with an inarticulate cry that mingled with the wind and was carried away.
The dark figure stood still just where it had so suddenly appeared, and in an instant Raymond had turned her light upon it. In the circle of light Jane saw a man—a tall man, bareheaded. He had thrown up his arm as if to screen his face, but it only hid the mouth and chin. Over it his eyes looked straight at Raymond Heritage.
And Raymond gave a great cry of “Anthony!” The light dropped from her hand, fell with a crash on the stones, rolled over, and went out. Anthony Luttrell did not stir, but Raymond began to move towards him after a strange rigid fashion, and as she moved, she kept saying his name over and over:
“Tony—Tony—Tony—Tony.”
Her voice fell lower and lower. As she reached him it was nearly gone.
Jane turned from the stone wall where she was leaning, and stumbled back along the dark passage with the tears running down her face.
At that last whisper of his name, Anthony spoke:
“I’m not a ghost, Raymond. Did you think I was?”
They were so close together that if she had stretched out those groping hands another inch they would have touched him. Something in his tone set a barrier between them and Raymond’s hands fell empty. The world was whirling round her. Life and death, love and hate, their parting and this meeting were merged in a confusion that robbed her of thought and almost of consciousness. It seemed to her as if they had been standing there for a long, long time, or, rather, as if time had nothing to do with them, and they had been cast into a strange eternity. Out of the turmoil of her thought arose the remembrance of the last time she and Anthony had trysted in this place—a sky almost unbearably blue and the sea brilliant under the noonday sun. Now there was no light anywhere.
Anthony was alive. That should have been joy unbelievable. All through the years since she had read his name in the list of missing with what an overwhelming surge of joy would her heart have lifted to the words, “Anthony is alive.” Now she said them to herself and felt only a deeper, more terrible sense of separation than any that had touched her yet. They stood together, and between them there was a gulf unpassable—and no light anywhere.
Raymond moved very slowly back along the way that she had come. She came to the stone seat, caught at the back of it with a hand that suddenly began to shake, and sat down. A few slow moments passed. Then she bent and began to grope for the torch which she had dropped.
Anthony came towards her.
“What is it?” he said, and she answered him in a low, fluttering voice:
“My light—I dropped—it’s so dark—I want the light.”
The strong, capable hand groping without aim stirred something in Anthony. He said, almost roughly:
“I’ll find it.”
Then a moment later he had picked it up, found it intact save for a crack in the glass, and, switching it on, put it down on the seat beside her.
He was not prepared for her immediately flashing the light on to his face. An exclamation broke from him, and to cover it he said:
“I am changed out of knowledge.”
“Changed—yes—Tony, that scar.”
Her voice trembled away into silence. Her hand fell. The dusk was between them.
“Ugly, isn’t it? But I haven’t the monopoly of change, have I? You, I think, have changed also.”
“Yes.”
With an impulse she hardly understood, she raised the light and turned it until her face and her bare throat were brilliantly illuminated. The dark cloak fell away a little. The dark eyes looked at him with defiance and appeal. Her beauty, seen like that, had something that startled; it was so devoid of life and colour, and yet so great! After a long, breathless minute Anthony said in his slow voice:
“You have changed more than I have, Lady Heritage, for you have changed your name.”
He saw the last vestige of colour leave her face. She put the lamp down, and her silence startled him.
“No one would have known me,” he said after a pause that was all strain.
“I knew you,” said Raymond very low.
“Only because the lower part of my face was hidden. You’d have passed me in daylight. You have passed me.”
She winced at that, turned the light full on to him again, and said:
“You are working in the laboratory—that’s—that’s why....” She broke off for a minute and went on with a sort of violence, “You say that I didn’t know you, but I did—I did. All this week I’ve been tormented with your presence. All this week I’ve felt you just at hand, just out of reach. I kept saying to myself, ‘Tony’s dead,’ and expecting to meet you round every corner. It was driving me mad.”
“It sounds most uncomfortable,” said Anthony dryly.
Raymond saw a mocking look pass over his face. She turned the light away and set it down. If she had not felt physically incapable of rising to her feet, she would have left him then. This was not Anthony at all, only the anger, the bitterness, the cold resentment which she had hated in him. These, not Anthony, had come back from the grave.
He was speaking again:
“Perhaps I shouldn’t ask, but ... are you expecting to meet any one here? Am I in the way?”
She answered him with a sort of heartbroken simplicity quite beyond pride:
“I don’t know what I expected. You were haunting me so. I came here because ... oh, Tony, don’t you remember at all?”
“I remember something that you appear to have forgotten, Raymond. When like a fool, and a dishonourable fool at that, I gave you the secret of these passages, I remember very well the rather enthusiastic terms in which you asserted your conviction that the secret was a sacred trust, and one that you would keep absolutely inviolate. As, however, I broke my own trust in giving you the secret, I can, I suppose, hardly complain because you have imitated my lack of discretion.”
Raymond did rise then.
“Tony, what do you mean?” she cried.
“My dear Raymond, you know very well what I mean.”
“I do not.” Her voice had risen; this was more the Raymond of their old quarrels, a creature quick to passionate anger, vehement and reckless.
“I say you know very well.”
“And I say that I do not. That I haven’t the shadow of an idea—and that you must explain, Tony; explain.”
“Oh, I’ll explain all right!”
The last word was almost lost in a battering gust of wind. He waited for it to die away, and then:
“How soon did you give away the secret to Ember?” he said, and heard her gasp.
“To Jeffrey—you think I told Jeffrey?”
Anthony laughed. It needed only her use of Ember’s name.
“I know that you told Ember,” he said in a voice like ice.
Raymond put her hands to her head. She pressed her throbbing temples and stared at this shadow of Anthony. It was beyond any nightmare that they should meet like this. She made a very great effort, and came up to him, touching his wrist, trying to take his hand.
“Tony, I don’t know what you’re thinking of. I don’t know how you can speak to me like this. I don’t know what you mean—I don’t indeed. Since you went I have only been into the passages twice, last night and to-night. I went there because—oh, why do people go and weep upon a grave? I had no grave to go to, but I thought that, if I came here where we used to meet, perhaps the you that was haunting me would take shape so that I could see it, or else leave me. I felt driven, and I didn’t know what was driving me.”
In the breathless silence that followed she heard him say:
“Iknowthat you told Ember”—and quite suddenly all the strength went out of her.
When Jane turned, and ran back down the dark passage, she had just the one thought—to get away out of earshot. That she, or any one but Anthony Luttrell, should have heard that breaking tone in Raymond’s voice shocked her profoundly. She felt guilty of having intruded upon the innermost sacred places of another woman’s life. It shocked and moved her very deeply. Tears blinded her, and she ran into the dark without a thought for herself. It was only when, looking back, she could not see even a glimmer of outside twilight that she halted and began to think what she must do.
The practical was never very long in abeyance with Jane. She began to plan rapidly, even whilst she dried her eyes. She would feel her way to the foot of the stairs. If she kept touching the left-hand wall, there would be very little risk of losing her way. Only one passage had led off in that direction and that one diverged at right angles, so that she would not run the risk of going down it unawares. When she came to the foot of the stairs, she would turn back again and wait in the first cross-passage until Raymond passed. Then she would follow her up the steps and watch to see how the door opened on this side.
Jane was very much pleased with her plan when she had made it. It made her feel very intelligent and efficient. She began to put it into practice at once, walking quite quickly with her right hand feeling in front of her and the left just brushing the wall. Of course the stone was horrid to touch—cold, damp, slimy. She was sure the slime was green. Once she jabbed her finger on a rock splinter, and once she touched something soft which squirmed. The dark seemed to get darker and darker, and the silence was like a weight that she could hardly carry.
Her little glow of self-satisfaction died down and left her coldly afraid. Then, quite suddenly, she came to the cross-passage. Her fingers slid from the stone into black air, groped, stretched out, and touched—something—warm, alive.
Jane’s gasping scream went echoing down the dark. A hand came up and caught her wrist, another fell upon her right shoulder.
“Jane, for the Lord’s sake, hush!” said Henry’s voice.
Jane caught her breath as if she were going to scream again.
“Henry, you utter, utter,utterbeast!” she said, and incontinently burst into tears.
Henry put his arms round her, and Jane wept as she had never wept in her life, her face tightly pressed against the rough tweed of his coat sleeve, her whole figure shaking with tumultuous sobs.
Presently, when she was mopping her eyes and feeling quite desperately ashamed, she exclaimed:
“I had just touched a slug, and you were worse. I didn’t think anything could be worse than a slug, but you were.”
Henry had kissed the back of her neck twice while she was crying. Now he managed to kiss a little bit of damp cheek.
“You’re not to,” said Jane, in a muffled whisper.
“Why not?” said Henry, with the utmost simplicity. “You don’t mind it, you know you don’t.” He did it again. “Jane, if you had minded, you wouldn’t have clung to me like that. Jane darling, you do like me a little bit, don’t you?”
“Oh, I don’t! And I didn’t cling, I didn’t.”
“You did. Take it from me, you did.”
Jane made a very slight effort to detach herself. It was unsuccessful because Henry was a good deal stronger than she was and he held her firmly.
“Henry, I really hate you,” she said. “Any one might cling, if they thought it was a slug or Mr. Ember and then found it wasn’t.” Then, after a pause, “Henry, when a person says they hate you, it’s usual to let go of them.”
“My book of etiquette,” said Henry firmly, “says—page 163, para. ii.—‘A profession of hatred is more compromising than a confession of love; a woman who expresses hatred in words has love in her heart.’ And I really did see that in a book yesterday, so it’s bound to be true, isn’t it?—isn’t it, darling?”
“Henry, I told you to stop,” said Jane; “I simplywon’tbe kissed by a man I’m not engaged to.”
“Oh, but we are,” said Henry. “I mean you will, won’t you?”
Jane came a very little nearer.
“We should quarrel,” she said, “quite dreadfully. You know there are some people you feel you’d never quarrel with, not if you lived with them a hundred years; and there are others, well, you know from the very first minute that you’d quarrel with them and keep on doing it.”
“Like we’re doing now?” said Henry hopefully. Jane nodded. Of course Henry could not see the nod, but he felt it because it bumped his chin.
“All really happily married people quarrel,” he said. “The really hopeless marriages are the polite ones. And you know you’ll like quarrelling with me, Jane. We’ll make up in between whiles, and there won’t be a dull moment. Will you?”
“I don’t mind promising to quarrel,” said Jane. “No, Henry, you’re positively not to kiss me any more. I’m here on business, if you’re not. How did you get here? And why were you lurking here, pretending to be a slug?”
“Suppose you tell me first,” said Henry. “How didyouget here?”
“I followed Lady Heritage. I’ve got an immense amount to tell you.”
She leaned against Henry’s arm in the darkness, and spoke in a soft, eager voice:
“It really began yesterday. I woke up and couldn’t go to sleep again, so I came down for a book, and just as I was at the drawing-room door, I saw Lady Heritage come out of the corner by Willoughby Luttrell’s picture. Did you know there was a door there, Henry?”
“Yes. Go on.”
“She went upstairs, and I was trying to screw up my courage to cross the hall when Mr. Ember came down the stairs and disappeared into the same corner. Of course then Iknewthere must be a door there, so I made up my mind to come down to-night and look for it.”
“Jane, wait,” said Henry. “You say Ember came down the stairs and went through the door. Do you think Lady Heritage left it open? Or do you think he watched her come out, and then found the way for himself?”
“No,” said Jane; “neither. I mean I’m quite sure it wasn’t like that at all. She shut the door, for I heard it, and it certainly wasn’t the first time Mr. Ember had been that way. Why, he even put his light out before he came to the wall, and any one would have to know the way very well to find it in the dark.”
“Yes. Then what happened?”
“I went back to bed. Henry, you simply haven’t any idea how much I hated going up those stairs. There was a perfectly fiendish patch of moonlight, and I felt as if I couldn’t go through it and perhaps be pounced on by some one just round the corner. If it hadn’t been for the housemaids finding me in the morning, I believe I should just have stuck where I was.”
Henry’s arm tightened a little.
“Well, to-night I hid in the study quite early, but I had hardly got there when Lady Heritage came down. I watched to see what she did, and as soon as she had gone through the door and shut it, I hauled that great heavy chair along and climbed on to it, and found the spring. Your old secret door was made for much taller people than me, and I was just dreadfully frightened that some one would come and find me standing on the chair in the corner, and looking like a perfect fool. Oh, Iwasthankful when I really got into the passage and found that Lady Heritage was still in sight.”
“I think it was frightfully clever of you,” said Henry, “frightfully clever and frightfully brave; but you’re not to do it again. You might have run into Ember or any one.”
“Then you do believe there’s something dreadful going on,” said Jane quickly.
“I don’t know about what I believe, but I know that the passages are being used, and that they’ve been wired for electric light. I haven’t explored them yet, but people don’t do that sort of thing for nothing. Now go on. I may say that I saw Raymond pass, and you after her. What happened next?”
Jane hesitated.
“I’ll tell you,” she said. “She opened another door, and went out—why, it’s been puzzling me, but of course I know now, the passage leads to the headland. And the other day, when I was so frightened, Mr. Patterson must have come out of it; and he was there to-night.”
“Yes, go on. Did they meet?”
“Yes,” said Jane, in a queer, shy voice. “I couldn’t help hearing. I ran away at once, but I couldn’t help hearing her call him Tony. It’s your cousin, Anthony Luttrell, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it’s Tony,” said Henry. “Thank the Lord they’ve met. I’d just left him there after jawing him about seeing Raymond.”
“Oh, I hope they’ve made it up,” said Jane. “She looked so dreadfully unhappy last night that I felt I simply couldn’t bear it. It’s so dreadful to see people hurt like that, and not be able to do anything. Do you think they’ll make it up?”
“I hope so,” said Henry not very hopefully. “Tony’s a queer sort of fellow, you know—frightfully hard to move, and a perfect devil for hugging a grievance. He’s had a rotten time of it too. What with Raymond marrying some one else, and then getting knocked out himself, and coming round to find himself a prisoner—well, there wasn’t much to take his mind off it. He escaped three times before he actually got away, and then he went to Russia and had the worst time of the lot. So that he’s got a good deal of excuse for sticking to his grouch.”
Jane suddenly pinched Henry very hard, put her lips quite close to his ear, and breathed:
“Some one’s coming.”
As she spoke Henry drew her noiselessly back a yard or two. The faint glow which Jane had seen brightened until it seemed dazzling. The arched entrance to the tunnel in which they stood became sharply defined. The light struck the opposite wall, showing it rough and black, with patches of dull green slime.
Instantly Jane felt that her finger-tips would never be clean again. As the thought shuddered through her mind the light went by. That’s what it looked like, the passing of a light. Raymond’s dark figure hardly showed behind it. The lighted archway faded. The darkness spread an even surface over everything again.
Jane laid her face against Henry’s sleeve, pressed quite close to him, and said in a little voice that trembled:
“Oh, they haven’t made it up—they haven’t. He’d have come with her if they had.”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Ofcoursehe’d have come with her. You wouldn’t have let me go by myself, you know you wouldn’t. No, they haven’t made it up, they can’t have, and—oh, Henry, why do people quarrel like that? You won’t with me, will you—ever? I mean that dreadful world-without-end sort. I couldn’t bear it. You won’t, will you?”
Jane was shaking all over. Henry put his arms round her very tight, laid his cheek against hers, and said:
“Not much! It’s a mug’s game.”
After a little while Jane said:
“I must go. You know she came to my room before, and last night when I got back I found the door shut. I had left it open so as not to make any noise, but it was shut when I got back. That frightened me more than anything, but now I think it must have been the wind that shut it. I think so, only I’m not sure. It might have been the wind, or it might have been ... somebody. It’s much more frightening not to be sure. So I’d better go, hadn’t I?”
“Yes, you must go,” said Henry. “I’ll come with you and show you how to get out. And you must promise me, Jane, that you won’t come down here by yourself?”
“How can I promise? I might have to.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know why,” said Jane, “but I might have to. Supposing they were murdering some one, and I heard the screams? Or suppose I knew that they were just going to blow the house up?”
“Well,” said Henry, with strong common sense, “I don’t see what good you’d do by getting murdered and blown up too, which is what it would come to. You really must promise me.”
“I really won’t.”
Henry gave her an exasperated shake.