Walk with Care (19 page)

CHAPTER XXIX

HE STOOD LOOKING DOWN
at her, half incredulous, half horrified. That lasted only for a moment. A conviction that what she said was true took bleak possession of his mind. She saw him frown, and heard the altered note in his voice as he said,

“But good Lord—why?”

She said in a quick, frightened way,

“I don't know. They're frightened too. It's because they're frightened. But it's wicked, wicked,
wicked”

Something in her voice hurt him. That deep sensitive place was touched. This time it hurt. He had a momentary sense of loss of balance. Then he spoke.

“You really heard this?”

“Yes.”

“Papers were to be hidden in my room?”

“Yes.”

“Who was going to put them there, and how were they going to get in?”

“They've got a key.” Her eyes were wide and bright. Suddenly she sprang up and caught his arm, pressing against him and saying in an urgent sobbing way, “Why didn't you go—on Sunday when I told you? You ought to have gone when I told you.”

“I'm to run away?” said Jeremy. “Is that it? I'll see them damned first!”

She pressed closer, quivering with earnestness. The crimson shawl fell soft against his hand.

“No—no, you can't fight them! They'll hurt you! I don't
want
them to hurt you!”

Jeremy had his arm round her. When she trembled like that, he felt able to fight anyone. It was a most exhilarating feeling. He said,

“Oh, Rachel darling, do you really want me to run away?”

“Yes—yes—yes I”

“And leave you behind?”

She caught her breath and said “Yes” again, but faintly.

“What do you think everyone would say if I ran away, you darling little idiot? Why, it would be as good as a confession. Do you know what I think? I think that's what they're after. I think they want to stampede me. Don't you see, if they could get me to bolt, it would play right into their hands?”

He thought to himself, “By gum, that's it! They're in a tight place, and they're trying to rattle me. If I can be got to bolt, they'll put the Denny business on to me, and Lord knows what else.”

Rachel was leaning back against his arm. She said piteously,

“What can you do? I'm so frightened.”

“Well, the first thing to do is to get those papers back—I suppose they'll have planted them by now. And then”—he laughed—“we can think of somewhere to put the keys, I'd like Mannister to find them himself, and I'd like to see his face when he finds them. I suppose he's in it.” He felt her shrink. His arm tightened. “Rachel, tell me the whole thing, and let me take you away.”

Rosalind would take her in. Would she? Of course she would.

“I can't,” she said.

“Why can't you? It's horrible to think of you with people like that. What hold have they got over you? Won't you tell me?”

“I can't.”

He could only just hear the words. He pulled her round to face him, and saw that she was pale to her lips, and her eyes dark with tears.

“What's that woman Asphodel to you? She's not your mother?”

Two big drops brimmed up and fell. Her eyelids closed. The long wet lashes made her look very young.

She said, “No,” and caught her breath in a sob.

Jeremy felt the most immense relief.

“Thank the Lord!” he said. “That's what I've been afraid of. Not that it would have made any difference, but it would have been a most ghastly complication. I say, darling, don't shake like that—it's all right. I'm not going to let you go back.”

He felt her stiffen in his arm.

“I've got to go back. You must go and get those papers. Jeremy, will you let me go?”

“No, I won't.”

“Jeremy, will you please let me go?”

He put his other arm round her too.

“Do you want to go?”

“No—but I must.”

“Do you hate my arms round you like this?”

Her eyelids lifted. She gave him a long soft look that was full of light.

“No—it makes me feel safe.”

“And I'm to let you go?”

The light went out.

“Please,
Jeremy.”

Jeremy lost his head a little. She was so near and so dear, and all the time they had not known one another seemed to have shrunk to an infinitesimal point outside this new dimension in which they were one and had never been separate. He heard himself say in a rough, uneven voice, “Rachel!” and before he had known that he was going to kiss her his face was against hers and her arms were round his neck. He kissed her, and she kissed him back with two soft, trembling kisses, and then her hands dropped from his neck and held him away. He said,

“I know it's too soon. Rachel—darling—I didn't mean to. I feel as if I'd known you always. I don't know when I'm going to see you again. Are you angry?”

Her lips quivered into a smile. Her eyes were dark and serious.

“Ought I to be angry? I kissed you too. Was it dreadful of me?”

Jeremy lifted her hands to his lips. He said foolish things—foolish, incoherent things.

Presently she pulled them away.

“Please,
Jeremy. I want to say things. You mustn't kiss me any more. I think we had better sit down again, and you can be in one corner of the sofa, and I will be in the other. It gives me a sort of shaky feeling when you kiss me.”

They sat down again. There was a rosy colour in her cheeks and her eyes shone. She sat up straight in the corner of the sofa with her hands in her lap and looked at him.

“I oughtn't to have let you kiss me. No,
please,
Jeremy. It's very difficult to say, and you mustn't say anything till I've finished. You see, if you really care, it's no good, and if you don't, perhaps you're thinking I'm the sort of girl who lets people kiss her. I'm not—
really,
Jeremy.”

Jeremy made a movement towards her and then sat back again. He did his best with his voice, but it was not quite under control as he said,

“Why did you kiss me, Rachel?”

She met his look with a very steady one.

“I felt as if we belonged. I felt safe.”

“And why do you think I kissed you, Rachel?”

“I think you felt that too.” And then, “I was afraid.”

“You needn't be afraid. I kissed you because we belonged, and because I'm going to keep you safe.” He leaned forward, but he did not touch her. “I knew we belonged the very first time I saw you, when you only stood in the doorway there and looked at me. I've got the little owl you dropped. Did you know you'd dropped it?”

She leaned forward too. Her outstretched hands met his.

“Oh, I'm so glad! I did hate to lose it. My father made them, you know, and it's the only one I've got. They took them all—”

“Who's ‘they,' Rachel?” He came nearer.

“I can't tell you. Do you know what I was dreaming that night? I was very unhappy and—and afraid, and I took my baby owl to bed with me because Daddy made it.” She held Jeremy's hand rather tightly for a moment,

“Why were you unhappy?”

“It was about you—because they were going to hurt you. It was the first time I heard them talking about it, and when I went to sleep I thought I saw you a long way off. I couldn't see your face, or what you were like, but I knew it was you. And just as I was coming up to you, I heard Nanny calling in a frightfully cross voice. She said, ‘If you don't come this directly minute, Miss Rachel, I'll set a goose to walk on your grave.'” She broke into a little half laugh. “Wasn't it
silly?
But in the dream it frightened me so that I just turned round and ran, and I never got to you at all. And when I woke up my baby owl was gone.”

“Have I got to give it back?” said Jeremy.

Rachel said, “No,” and for a moment there was silence between them. Then she said, “Jeremy—” and then again, “Jeremy—”

“What is it?”

Her hand held his with a trembling pressure.

“We've so little time. I wasted it telling that silly dream. Why did I?”

“There'll be more times—better ones—lots of them.”

She shook her head. Her clinging grasp relaxed, and with a deep sigh she drew away.

“No—
never
—we can't—”

“Can't we? You just wait and see! Why, I'm the one who ought to be saying all that.” He went down on his knees and put his arms round her. “Look at me, and I'll tell you what I ought to say. I haven't got a bean, and I've no business to make love to you or to ask you to marry me, or anything like that. That's what I ought to be saying, and I'm not going to say a single word of it. I'm going to say we're right at the beginning of the most topping adventure. We're going to love each other all the ways there are. I'm going to teach you my way, and you're going to teach me yours, and we'll learn the other ways together, and the more of an adventure it is, and the more things there are to get the better of, the more worth while it's going to be.
Mow
are you going to say we can't?”

The lovely colour rushed into Rachel's cheeks. Her lips parted and her eyes shone.

She said “No” in a voice that sounded as if she had been running—running to meet Jeremy.

“Then kiss me.”

She put her arms round his neck again and kissed him simply and solemnly. There was a time that was not time.

Neither knew how long it lasted. Three chiming strokes struck on a whispering hush. Jeremy lifted his head and saw the hands of the clock standing at a quarter to eleven. It took him a little time to come back. Since the stroke of ten he had been into another world and everything had undergone a change. It was as if the angle from which he looked at even the commonest things had been changed, shifted, giving a new point of view, and this new point of view was of the most absorbing interest. He found himself noticing shades of colour, variations of texture, the slant and depth of a shadow, the brilliance and beauty of light.

Then Rachel spoke in a little voice close to his ear.

“Let me go, Jeremy.”

It was difficult to believe that she could go. It was difficult to come back.

“Let me go.”

“Not yet.”

And with that the telephone bell began to ring. You always had to come back. Jeremy got up and went over to the table. Mannister again? Or Brunon? He wondered whether Mannister had invented the possible call from Brunon.

It appeared that he wronged Mannister in this, for as soon as he put the receiver to his ear a man's voice said,

“Paris wants you. Call out, please.”

It really was Brunon—a Brunon at first rather formal and polite, and then, on hearing that Mannister was out of town, a very decidedly annoyed and excited Brunon, a Brunon who demanded Mannister' s address, his telephone number, the name of his exchange, and, on being informed with all polite regrets that none of this information was to be had, dissolved into excited profanity and slammed the receiver back with a jar which was very faithfully transmitted over the intervening two hundred miles of wire.

“Someone isn't best pleased,” said Jeremy with a laugh. He put the receiver back and turned to an empty room.

Rachel was gone.

CHAPTER XXX

HE KNEW WELL ENOUGH
that it was no use trying to catch her up, and yet of course he was bound to try. He found nothing but dark echoing emptiness, with the cold finality of a stone wall at the end of it. He stood before the wall and cursed himself for all the fools in the world. Why hadn't he kept the door in sight? Why hadn't he guessed that she would slip away? He had not meant to let her go until she had told him how to get through this wall so that he could come to her if she needed him.

He came back to the library and began to think what he would do next. If it had not been for the other things that had happened, he would not have been able to believe that papers had been deliberately planted in his room in order to get him into trouble, but after finding Mannister's keys in his pocket anything seemed possible. The thing that bothered him now was how to get back again into the house if he went round to Nym's Row and found that there really were papers hidden in his room. He supposed it would have to be the scullery window again.

He went out, shutting the door with its spring lock behind him. The fog was very thick. He groped his way round to the Row, and was glad it was no farther. All the windows were dark except Mr John Brown's. Mr Brown kept late hours. Mrs Beamish said he sat up reading books, and opined that he would pay for it sooner or later. She considered reading alternatively as an idle waste of time, and as an exercise extremely dangerous to the health.

As Jeremy reached the top of the stairs, Lizzie Walker called out to him. Her door was ajar. Her voice sounded angry.

“Is that you, Mr Jeremy?”

He said, “Yes. Is anything the matter?”

“Wait a minute.”

Her feet padded to the door, and a flicker of candlelight came through the opening. So did the peaceful snores of Mr Walker.

“What is it, Lizzie?”

“I wanted to make sure as it was you.”

“Oh, it's me all right.”

Mrs Walker looked crossly round the door at him for a moment and then withdrew. Her hair was in two tight plaits, and the frill of a solid calico night-gown stood up round her neck. She spoke through the crack in a hoity-toity voice.

“And I'm sure I hope as how you're going to your lawful bed and ha' done with it!”

“I'm sorry if I woke you, Lizzie.”

Mrs Walker snorted.

“You can't wake those as hasn't closed a h'eye—and 'ow you expect anyone short of a rhinoceros to sleep with you tramping up and down those stairs the 'ole blessed night, or creeping up them, which is a whole sight worse and give me the jumps a-thinking it was cat-burglars at last, and I'm sure I've been looking for them long enough, and when I calls out and says, ‘Who's there?' you calls out and says ‘Ho, Lizzie, it's only me!' you says. And a-course I thought you'd come 'ome to bed, but no—just as I was a-dropping off, out you goes and give me such a start I never closed a h'eye again, and wouldn't till I heard you come in and made sure as it
was
you.”

So it was true. Someone had been up to his room. And he must have had a key. Someone had been up to his room, “crawling and creeping,” but able to answer Lizzie Walker in a voice that had passed for Jeremy's when she called out. Had there been just one instinctive doubt to bring her to the door this time to have a look at him? Perhaps. Jeremy could only wish it had got her out of bed in time to have a look at the someone who had come “crawling and creeping,” and who certainly wasn't Jeremy Ware. He would have given a good deal to have had Lizzie Walker's chance of a look through the crack of the door at the somebody who could imitate his voice well enough to deceive Lizzie who had known him from a baby, and Rosalind in whose house he had lived. He didn't doubt at all that if he had had that chance, he would have discovered who had talked with Rosalind on the telephone and sent her the photographs of a letter in Gilbert Denny's writing.

Well, it was no good frightening Lizzie Walker.

He said, “I'm afraid I've got to go out again, Lizzie. I'm awfully sorry if I disturbed you. I'll make as little noise as I can.”

He went on to his room, and heard Mrs Walker's door shut angrily.

There were not many places where anything could be hidden. There was his box, his chest of drawers, the bed, and a row of books on the mantelpiece. He started on the box. It wasn't locked. He wouldn't have insulted Lizzie Walker by locking a box in her house. He threw everything out on to the floor and then started to put things back. He began to wonder why he kept some of the things he had kept. He made good resolutions about clearing half of them out. This always happened whenever he went through his box.

There were some books. He took them by the covers and shook them. Out of the third book there fell a letter written on thin paper in a squiggly hand and signed “Andre Brunon.” Jeremy took a hurried look at it and found it to be replete with lively indiscretions. A chatty fellow M. Brunon, with a pen running easily to scandal.

That was all he got out of the box, but there was something in Italian between the folds of an under-vest in the second drawer of his chest of drawers, and three pages of a most intriguing cipher in one of the books on the mantelpiece. That was the total bag.

Jeremy spread it out on his bed and looked at it, his jaw set square, his eyebrows twitching over those deep-set eyes of his. He was angrier than he had ever been in his life, and behind the anger the cold padding feet of fear went to and fro. Who was this devil who could talk with his voice and write with his hand, or with Gilbert Denny's hand? And if Jeremy was put to it, how was he going to prove that it wasn't his voice, or his hand? When he went to the bank to-morrow to ask how that fifty pounds got into his account, it was Io to I—no, by gum, it was Iooo to I—that they'd show him his own signature to prove that he'd paid it in himself. How did you get clear of a net like this? The more he thought about that fifty pounds, the less he liked it. There was that first letter of Mannister's which had gone missing. … Did they mean to make out that he had sold it, and that the fifty pounds was his price? And who was going to believe he hadn't, with his signature at the bank—it would be there; there was no possible doubt that it would be there—and these damned papers found amongst his things? Well, they weren't going to be found—not this time anyhow.

He put them in his pocket and went down the rainpipe and over the wall.

The scullery window presented no difficulties, and he was glad of the fog. The only real risk on a clear night was that he might be seen getting in. The fog made him feel perfectly safe, and he would not have to return this way, since he was supposed to be working in the library and could leave the house by the front door.

He reached the library without incident. He had now to decide what he was going to do with the papers. Properly speaking, they should be in the safe. But if he put them there, it would be an admission that he had opened the safe. An admission to whom? To whoever had planted the papers in his room. Was it Mannister? He couldn't tell. No, it couldn't be Mannister. Well, if he was sure that it wasn't Mannister, there was only one thing to be done, and that was to go to Mannister and say, “Look here, sir, someone put your keys in my pocket and your papers in my room.” Oh Lord—how thin it sounded! And he wasn't sure. He wasn't sure about anything. It put him in mind of being out in the dusk of a summer morning before the sun was up, and the air full of gossamers that brushed your face and hands. They floated unseen and touched you, and you knew neither where they came from nor why they came. They were neither to be grasped nor followed, but the dark air was full of them. That was what this was like—floating threads that touched you in the dark—floating threads—floating snares. …

The papers would have to go into the safe. He could think of nothing else to do with them. He locked them away, and was glad to be rid of them. As to the keys, he slipped them into the left-hand top drawer of Mannister's writing-table. If Mannister was clear of this foul business, he could only think he had put them there inadvertently, and if he wasn't clear, he would get a jolt which would be all to the good.

Jeremy thought about the jolt with satisfaction. Somebody was going to get it all right.

He went home by way of Tilt Street. The fog was thinning a little as the night grew colder. He could just see the street-lamps like blurred yellow cocoons with ragged edges of light fraying off into the thick dark. He remembered keeping silkworms when he was ten, and the way the raw silk clung to your fingers when you tried to unwind the cocoons. He remembered being very proud of a deep golden cocoon. Most of them came straw-coloured, but this was almost orange. These lamps in the fog put him in mind of it.

He came into Nym's Row and slipped his key into the lock. Mr John Brown's window still showed a light. Jeremy opened the door and went upstairs as cautiously as if he had really been a burglar. A steady duet of snores came from the Walkers' room. He shut his door and went to bed.

He had been asleep for half an hour when Mr Brown dropped from the wall of No. 1 Tilt Street and, crossing Mr Mannister's garden, climbed from the far corner of it into Mrs Beamish's yard. He went in through the scullery door, which he locked behind him, and so up to the room where his gas had been burning wastefully for half the night. He had the air of a man who has done a good day's work.