Danger Point (4 page)

FOR some little time now Lisle Jerningham had got into a way of reckoning days which a few months ago she would not have believed possible. It was a good day if Dale was pleased with her. It was not such a bad day if she only vexed him a little. It was a bad day if he talked about Tanfield and how there had always been Jerninghams there. It was a dreadful day when he laboured with her to persuade old Mr. Robson, who was her trustee, that some of her capital should be devoted to keeping Tanfield in the Jerningham family. At first all the days were good. Then, when she was silly and tactless enough to let him see that Tanfield chilled her to the bone, the good days became fewer and fewer, and the bad days more and more frequent. She had done all she could to please him — tried to hide what she felt about Tanfield — and sometimes everything cleared up and there were happy times again, just as there had been at first. The week before the visit to the Cranes had been a really happy time.

Lisle lay in bed and thought about what a happy time it had been, and tried not to think that the happiness had begun on the day she signed her new will in Mr. Robson’s office. And yet, why shouldn’t she think of it? She had done it to please Dale. Well then, why shouldn’t she be pleased? And she had no near relations, so what other sort of will could she make?

“Your father has left you the power of appointment, Mrs. Jerningham. Failing children, you can leave the whole estate to your husband. If there are children, you can leave him a life interest in half the estate. You can, of course, make any other dispositions you please. Have I made myself quite clear?”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Robson.”

Dale had smiled at her over the old man’s head with a deep, warm look which was like sunshine to her heart. She heard herself say in a happy, spontaneous voice.

“Then that’s what I’d like to do — leave most of it to Dale.”

The happiness had lasted all through the week. Looking back into it was like looking into a sunny garden full of flowers. Even the fact that she had very nearly been drowned didn’t spoil it, because when she thought of that she could only feel Dale’s arms round her as she opened her eyes, and Dale’s voice choked with feeling saying her name over and over again:

“Lisle — Lisle — Lisle!”

The fears and doubts which had shocked her into talking to Miss Silver in the train had no longer any place. They had gone up like mist and vanished.

If only she hadn’t run away from the Cranes… Dale had come to look for her. He had kissed her as if he loved her. And then, as soon as he knew that she had run away, the happiness was gone. He hadn’t looked at her once all the evening. He had hardly spoken to her, though he had been gay and affectionate with Rafe and Alicia. And when they came upstairs he had given her the curtest of good-nights as he went into his dressing-room and shut the door.

She lay and looked out into the shadowy room. The bed was a great four-poster, heavily carved. At first sight it had reminded Lisle of a catafalque. She hated it, but when Dale was there and Dale was kind she forgot about that. It was when she was alone and unhappy that all the dark, heavy furniture seemed to belong, not to her, but to the dead Jerninghams who had been born and married and had died here before Lisle Van Decken was thought of. There were three tall windows on her left, two of them curtained and the third with the curtains drawn back. Dale’s door faced her, and the moonlight coming in through the uncurtained window laid a pale rectangle upon the floor. The light stretched to the very threshold of the door. If it opened, she would see it catch the light. But it wouldn’t open now. Dale wasn’t coming. He had said his curt good-night and left her.

She lay quite still and slowly, steadily, her mind darkened. The moonlight passed from the window and the room darkened too. Some time between midnight and one o’clock Lisle’s darkness slid into sleep.

In the next room Dale Jerningham woke up. He came straight from deep sleep into a state of listening alertness. It was his way to sleep from the time his head touched the pillow until seven o’clock. If he waked between these times, it was because something had waked him. He rose on his elbow, heard again what he must have heard already, and throwing back the bedclothes, went barefoot to the door between his room and Lisle’s. Frowning in the darkness, he threw the door open and stood there looking in. There was no light except what came from that one uncurtained window — a vague half light, for the moon had run into cloud. The bed, deeply shadowed, looked like a black island in a misty sea. Lisle’s voice came out of the shadow, crying his name in a pitifully shaken tone:

“Dale — Dale — it couldn’t be Dale—” He closed the door behind him and came to stand at the foot of the bed between the two black pillars. He could see her now, very dimly, lying high against heaped pillows. She said in a rapid murmur of sound,

“It’s no use your giving me your card because I shouldn’t want to use it. I don’t see how I could really — because of Dale — Dale wouldn’t like it. And it couldn’t be Dale. You do see that, don’t you? It couldn’t possibly be Dale. So I’ll just put your card in my bag — but it’s no good thinking I could do anything about it, because I couldn’t.” She flung out her hands in a groping gesture. “She said — lucky because Lydia died. That’s what she said — ‘a lucky accident for Dale’ — ” The voice went trembling into silence on his name. She fell back. He heard her gasp for breath. She drew herself up in the bed as if she were crouching there. “I nearly had an accident too. She said perhaps I’d have an — accident — like Lydia… It couldn’t be Dale—” She was going back to that rapid mutter. “Oh, no, no — it couldn’t be Dale.”

Dale went on listening. When she was quiet he crossed to a chest between the windows and opened the top right-hand drawer. Lisle had so many bags. She had been wearing a grey flannel coat and skirt when she went down to the Cranes. That meant a grey bag.

He took out the whole drawer, carried it through into his room, and put on the light there. The grey bag was pushed down in a corner. He opened it and sorted through the contents — handkerchief; lipstick; rouge and powder compact; keys. In an inner compartment a snapshot of himself — and a card. He picked it out and turned it to catch the light. The name on the card was completely strange to him, but he looked at it for a long time.

Miss Maud Silver

15 Montague Mansions,

West Leaham Street, S. W.

Private Investigations Undertaken.

When the time had run out he put the card back into the bag, and the bag into the drawer.

The room was very quiet when he came into it again. He slid the drawer into its place and stood for a moment listening to the stillness, then moved nearer to the bed. She stirred, caught her breath between a sob and a groan, and woke. There was a moment of terror, because the room was dark and someone was there — not speaking, not moving. And then, as he said her name, terror rushed out and joy rushed in.

She said in a warm voice, “Oh, darling, you frightened me,” and he came and knelt down beside her and put his arms round her.

“You frightened me. You were calling out in your sleep. What was it — a dream?”

“Oh, yes — a horrible dream. But it doesn’t matter now.”

Nothing mattered if Dale was there — if Dale was kind. There were no more dreams, and when she woke up the sun was on the windows and Dale was pouring out tea. Whatever cloud there had been between them, it had gone as completely as if it had never been. He was going over to the aerodrome after breakfast — he was crazy about flying just now. They talked about that, and about flying, and about what a bit of luck it had been getting his own price for the flying-ground. That is to say, he did most of the talking, and Lisle was happy because Dale was pleased.

“I wonder what my father would have said if anyone had told him all that moorland would fetch a fancy price. But there’ll be a subsidy worth having on wheat if there’s a war — and it’s bound to come. In my great-grandfather’s time you could stand up there where the aerodrome is and see nothing but wheat, so long as you stood with your back to the sea. Funny if it all came back again. There were big fortunes made then. But that won’t happen again, worse luck. They’ll skin our profits down somehow, damn them.”

He was sitting on the edge of the bed, his hair rumpled and his eyes smiling. Blue and white striped pyjamas set off the clear brown skin. The open collar showed the strong neck. She felt the old hero-worship for him spring up in her. It was something very primitive, and she was rather ashamed of it. Dale… Other women found him good to look at, ran after him. Some of them didn’t mind how plainly they showed their feelings. But he wasn’t for them — he was hers! She wasn’t proud of feeling like that, but she didn’t seem able to help it.

He laughed and said, “What are you thinking about?” and when she said, “You,” he kissed her and with his arm half round her went on,

“Keep right on doing it, darling, because I want to talk to you.”

She said, “What about?” and her heart went cold in her when he said,

“Tanfield.”

Dale sat back a little so that he could look at her. His hand slid down from her shoulder and rested against her knee.

“You see, I’ve got to give Tatham an answer.”

“Yes—” She could manage no more than that.

It seemed to her that all their lives hung on the answer which Dale would presently have to make. If he would take Mr. Tatham’s offer, sell Tanfield, and move those two miles inland to the Manor House, they would be free to live and be happy. But if there was something in him that wouldn’t let him sell, then they must stay here, and Tanfield would suck them dry until they were old, grey, dead people dragging an intolerable burden up an unending hill. Her hands came together and held each other tightly, as if they would hold on to something Dale was trying to take away, not from her — not just from her — but from both of them.

Her eyes went to his face and stayed there, dark with apprehension, because whenever they talked about Tanfield something strained between them and was wrenched almost to breaking-point. But today, though he looked serious, he did not frown. He leaned on his hand and said,

“It’s a good price. Most people would say I was a fool if I refused it. But you’re not most people, Lisle — you’re my wife. If I have a son to come after me here, you’ll be his mother. That’s what I want to talk to you about.” His voice changed suddenly and broke. “It’s so difficult to make you understand. And I’ve got a beast of a temper. I get angry, and then I say things, and you get hurt and frightened and we don’t get any farther. But I thought — we might — talk about it — differently. I thought you might — try to understand my point of view.”

He saw the colour go out of her face. It drained away and left the fair skin white. She said in an almost soundless whisper,

“I’ll try.”

He sat up, looking away from her.

“You don’t like Tanfield — you’ve made that quite plain. No, no, that’s all wrong — that’s not how I meant to begin. It’s so damned hard to make you see, and when I try to get hold of words that will show you how I feel, they’re the wrong ones.” He turned back to her again. “Lisle, help me by trying to understand.”

She said, “Yes — yes —”

“Then it’s this way. When you’ve had a place as long as we’ve had Tanfield, it doesn’t belong to you. It’s like your country — you belong to it — it comes first. Look at all the pictures in the long gallery. Those people have all lived here, had their time here. Most of them have added something in their time. And they’re gone — the whole lot of them. But Tanfield is here, and Tanfield is going to be here when we’re gone, and if we have sons, Tanfield will go on being here after their time too. Don’t you see what I mean? It doesn’t matter about us, and it doesn’t matter about our children. We shall go, and they’ll go, but Tanfield will go on.”

His eye had kindled and the colour had come to his cheek.

Lisle gazed at him with a sort of paralysed horror. He had said, “Try to understand,” and she had said, “I’ll try.” But she didn’t have to try. It was easy enough to understand, and the more she understood of it, the more it horrified her. People, human lives, herself and Dale, their children — all of no account in comparison with a great soulless barrack of a house, made uglier and more expensive by the successive sacrifices of each generation. It was a point of view, and she could understand it well enough, but it seemed to her quite mad, quite horrible.

Dale got up, walked to the window, and came back again. He hadn’t moved her — he could see that he hadn’t moved her. No colour, no response — her eyes watching him.

She said only just above her breath,

“There isn’t anything I can do.”

He flung himself down beside her.

“Not while you feel like that. Oh, Lisle darling, can’t you see? It’s no good going to Mr. Robson unless you feel different. I know you’ve asked him to let you put some of your capital into keeping Tanfield, and if you ask him a hundred times, he’ll still say no, because he can see that you don’t really mean it. If you felt differently, he’d let you do it. It’s because he knows you hate Tanfield that he won’t help you to save it.”

She looked up at him piteously.

“I’ll ask him, Dale — I will.”

He drew back.

“You asked him before, and he wouldn’t do anything. He never will do anything unless he is convinced that you really want him to. You might try to convince him, but unless you really did want him to save Tanfield he wouldn’t be convinced. He’s as sharp as a knife, and the reason he won’t do anything is because he’s damned sure you don’t really want him to.”

He walked over to the windows and stood looking out.

Lisle was sitting up clear of her pillows. She was quite rigid with the strain she was putting upon herself — on her body to keep it from shaking, on her voice to hold it steady, on her heart to keep down the cold surge of fear, on her mind and will to make them want what Dale wanted. If she truly and really wanted to keep Tanfield she could persuade Mr. Robson. Dale had just said so, and it was true. But no pretending would do — and how can you make yourself want what you shrink from with all your soul?