The Loving Spirit (50 page)

‘No, John.’

‘Darling, this isn’t any beastly selfishness on my part, I’m not trying to put over a brilliant attempt at seduction - if you want to be by yourself you can have my room and I’ll lock myself up in the lavatory, but every instinct I possess tells me to keep you beside me tonight, to be near you - in case anything should happen.’

‘John, if I came to you there would be no locked doors - you’d find yourself shut up with a very immodest and abandoned woman - but it isn’t that, it’s giving way to a foolish fixed idea you have in your mind for which there can be no earthly reason.’

‘Jenny - I’ve told you about my damned premonitions, haven’t I? I’ve told you that when I sense danger it’s infallible - I’m always right. Sweet, there’s danger for you tonight, danger in that gloomy blasted house, danger with that loathsome uncle of yours . . .’

‘You’re crazy, John. Uncle Philip is a weak, doddering old man, he hasn’t the strength to harm a fly, he always goes to bed by half past nine. What could he possibly do to me?’

‘I don’t know - I don’t care - Jenny, my Jenny, come home with me tonight. I want to hold you so you can’t get away, I want to tell you everything I’ve ever dreamt about you, so much, so much . . .’

‘John, don’t make me weak and helpless. I won’t give way to your creepy, haunting fears.’

‘Jenny - let me love you.’

‘No, John.’

‘Come back, Jennifer, don’t go - Jennifer - Jennifer.’

She ran away up the steps of the house, laughing over her shoulder. ‘Go home and be good. I’ll see you tomorrow.’ Then she slammed the door and was gone.

When Jennifer was inside the house, with the door between her and John, she closed her eyes and rested her head against the wall, her nails digging into the palms of her hands.

She had refused to go back with him when she wanted to more than anything in the world. Just for the sake of a senseless flickering spirit of independence, a cold sprite within her mind who laughed at love and denied emotion, who saw ridicule in all things, and who suggested surrender as weakness and loss of freedom. Knowing it to be false yet she had persisted in listening to this cold voice, and now she was all alone, and John half-way home in all probability. Sighing and yawning she dragged herself upstairs, seeing by the clock in the hall it was already half past ten.

She undressed slowly, sitting on the edge of her bed, and gazing in front of her. John would be prowling about the yard now, seeing that all was quiet for the night, he would light his last pipe before climbing to his funny rooms over the office. Jennifer pulled on her pyjamas savagely and turned into bed, her face buried in the pillow.

She must have slept some five hours when she awoke to a blinding flash of light in her eyes. She sat up, dazed and stupid, and saw her uncle standing beside the bed with a flash-light in his hands. He was fully dressed, and when she was about to exclaim he put his fingers over his lips, and glanced half fearfully towards the door.

‘Hush,’ he whispered, ‘we must not make a sound or they will hear us. Be quick, put on your dressing-gown and follow me.’

What did he mean? Were there burglars in the house? Jennifer fumbled for her dressing-gown and her slippers.

‘Are they downstairs?’ she asked. ‘Is it impossible to get to the telephone? Perhaps if we make a noise it will scare them.’

He shook his head and laid his hand on her arm. ‘Come with me.’

He led the way into the front room, and to her surprise she saw that the lights were switched on and a large fire was burning in the grate. On the table there was much litter of papers and official documents, and what seemed to her to be pile after pile of bank-notes.

‘Whatever have you been doing with all these, Uncle Philip? Surely - why, I don’t believe you’ve been to bed at all. What’s the matter? Are there no burglars, then? I don’t understand.’

‘Don’t be alarmed, Jennifer,’ he answered. ‘I am going to explain everything to you. Will you please sit down?’ She did so, gazing up at him in astonishment, while he stood with his back to the fire rubbing his hands together.

‘You see those papers scattered on the table?’

‘Yes, of course. What about them?’

‘There’s money there, Jennifer, stacks of it, bundles of it. All my money, shares, bonds, securities - crisp Bank of England notes. It belongs to me, do you understand, to me and to no one else.’

‘What are you going to do with it?’

‘That is the question I was waiting for.You want to know who will inherit all this, you want to know who will have the right to spend it when I die. See, your fingers are itching to stretch towards that table - I know you - I know you. You think all that is going to be yours, eh? Don’t you, don’t you? But you’re wrong, see, you won’t touch a penny of it, not a farthing.’ He trembled with excitement and pointed his finger at her.

‘You’ve been considering yourself an heiress all these months, haven’t you? No use in denial, I’ve seen you, I’ve watched you. But you were mistaken, hopelessly, miserably mistaken. Look at me - I say - look at me.’

He laughed, high pitched and shrill, he leaned towards the table and seized some of the papers, tearing them across, fluttering them before her eyes. ‘There - there - there goes your precious inheritance.’

Jennifer made no answer. She knew now that her uncle was mad, she knew now that she must move warily, carefully, lest he should do himself and her some irreparable harm.

‘Uncle Philip,’ she said softly. ‘Supposing we talk all this over in the morning. You’re tired now, come along to bed.’

He turned his narrow eyes upon her and smiled slowly. ‘No. I understand you too well. You think I am an old man to be fooled by you. I know you. As soon as my back is turned you creep down here and steal what doesn’t belong to you. No, I have been too clever for you. Much too clever!’ He made his way across the room and opened the door. Jennifer was aware of a queer, pungent smell that came from the passage, a smell of burning. She rose to her feet instantly, and crossed to the door.

‘What is it, what have you done?’

The air was thick with smoke, it travelled up to her from the staircase, and from the hall below. She saw the glint of flames as they caught at the woodwork of the staircase, and licked the strips of paper from the walls.

At once she remembered the two servants sleeping in their rooms at the top of the house. Then her uncle pushed her back into the study, locking the door.

‘No - you must not go,’ he cried, ‘you must come with me. I will not be alone, or they will break through to me and strangle me. We must keep them out, help me to keep them out, Jennifer.’

He seized the tongs and tore a flaming log from the fire. He set alight the curtains, the carpets, the papers on the table, while she watched him, grown stiff with horror, unable to cry out. The flames made their way from the curtains to the wall-papers, burning fiercely now and bright, destroying all that stood in their way.

Philip snatched the books from the shelves, he hurled them one by one into the centre of the room. The air was thick with smoke, the black smuts danced before Jennifer’s eyes, she watched the fire spread across the room, licking the ceiling, while moving amidst it was the figure of her uncle, laughing, sobbing, his hair singed, his hands outstretched flinging the books and the papers about him in confusion, feeding the hungry leaping flames.

Jennifer flung herself against the door, which resisted all her efforts, shouting at the pitch of her lungs.Then the smoke entered her throat, she sank to her knees, coughing, choking, the tears running down her cheeks. She groped about on the floor for the key of the door which her uncle had thrown aside, and at length she found it, and fitted it to the lock. But when she opened the door it was to be driven back by the swirling, driving smoke from the passage outside, and the heat of the burning staircase.

She heard something crash in the room behind her, a tall cabinet leaned from the wall, splintered and charred, and fell into the waiting flames.

‘Uncle Philip!’ she cried. ‘Uncle Philip, come away, come away!’

He heard her voice, and stumbled towards her, swaying, suffocated.

‘Get back, Joseph, get back from me, I say.’ He brandished a chair above his head, he flung it towards her, knocking her sideways, bleeding and stunned into the passage outside. She stumbled to her feet and fought her way to the staircase leading to the rooms above. She heard a scream of terror, and looking back for the last time she could see through the open door of the study the bent figure of her Uncle Philip, his clothes alight, his hands outstretched, running round and round in circles, with the flames at his feet . . .

She clung to the banisters, sick and giddy, dragging herself away from the fire below, knowing dimly that there was no escape, no means of safety. Part of the landing beneath her crashed, and she saw the floor sink into itself and crumble away.

There were no walls left to the study now; it had vanished, gaping, blackened, and charred - and her uncle was gone.

A cloud seemed to come upon Jennifer, seizing her throat, blinding her eyes, and she was falling, falling, part of the roaring flames and the crumbling stones.

 

 

When John heard the door of the house slam, and knew that her good night was final, he turned away and walked down the terrace, impatient with Jennifer, angry that she had not listened to his words.

He felt restless and unhappy, he knew that if he went to his rooms now sleep would not come to him. When he arrived at the yard he wandered towards the slipway, and after gazing at the still harbour water and the clear starlit sky above, he cast off the painter of his dinghy, and jumping into the boat he seized the paddles and began to pull away rapidly up harbour. He had no difficulty with the tide, for it was just about slack water, and the little boat shot away into mid-stream under his powerful stroke.

John hoped that with this exercising of his body something of the fear and care in his mind would pass from him, leaving him in the end both weary and untroubled. He tried to persuade himself that this feeling that held sway over him was nothing but the physical want of Jennifer, that his efforts to make her return with him were due to that alone, and to none other. His suffering now was the result of frustration.

He argued thus, knowing there was much truth in his self-accusation, but knowing also, in the depths of his reason, that he had another and more powerful motive. There was fear within him for her safety. Some danger threatened her, of which he had no knowledge, some horror was preparing to tear apart their happiness, bearing her away to the lost and lonely places. His hidden powers of foresight had risen swiftly, silently, against his will they had taken firm hold upon him, and now he was a prey to fear, with no means of protecting she who belonged to him, and who had laughed aside his strange warnings.

Unconsciously John was pulling towards Polmear Creek; the dark form of the wrecked schooner cast her shadow on the water. He made fast the painter, and climbed aboard. He went below to the black cabin and sat on the bench against the table, his head in his hands. Here he had seen Jennifer for the first time, here she had turned her first startled gaze upon him, her dark head thrown back, angry at his intrusion, the tears upon her cheeks. Here they had read her father’s letters, their shoulders touching, her hair brushing his cheek.

He remembered, with a strange thrill of pleasure and pain, that here he had also kissed her for the first time, she standing upon the companionway - between the cabin and the deck above, looking over her shoulder at him standing below, and he, blinded by something he did not understand, had caught her in his arms and carried her to the cabin, and there they had clung to one another, bewildered and lost, while he had whispered against her mouth. ‘Oh! Jenny - Jenny.’

Afterwards they had sat upon the bench, looking at each other with new eyes, Jennifer wondering and silent, and he, triumphant, miserable, unable to keep his hands and his lips away from her. Later, when they were accustomed to one another, they had laughed at those early moments of feverish confusion, and they had agreed that they must be the first pair of lovers to make the cabin of a ship their trysting-place.

John rested his face upon his hands, and the thoughts jumbled in his brain, and here he slept awhile, awaking some few hours later, cold and ill, knowing he must be gone.

Once more he climbed down into his waiting boat, and as he gazed at the white figurehead above him, it seemed to him that she whispered a message with her lips, that she counselled him go quickly if he would save Jennifer, for the danger was come upon her and she had need of him.

He turned his eyes upon the town of Plyn, shrouded in the quiet of the night, and when his gaze travelled in the direction of the terraces he knew.

For there, out of the darkness, leapt the vivid streak of a flame.

 

 

When John reached the house he had to fight his way through the crowd of people, shouting and crying in the road outside.

The engine, small and inadequate, was of little use against the terrific force of this fire, and though the men worked furiously, tirelessly, playing their hoses upon the burning buildings, the sheet of water hissing into the air, beating against the walls, it seemed they could not quench those fierce and hungry flames that turned and twisted into the sky.

John laid his hands upon one of the firemen, shouting in his ear above the roar and crackle of the flames, ‘Are they safe? The people of the house - are they safe?’

The man shook his head, his eyes scared, his face ashen. He pointed to the escape, placed against one of the higher windows.

‘There’s two women brought down, the servants of the place, but the walls are falling - the other floors must be rotted through by now - look there - Mr Stevens - look there!’