IT was a grey day and hopeless. The frost had gone, and so had the sunshine. There was a high wind from the south-east, and the country was dim behind a veil of constant rain, fine like needles. The wind, driving this curtain of rain before it but never driving it away, had risen in the night, and throughout the day remained.
There were idleness and depression and misery behind the walls of The Horse and Hound.
‘It would,’ said Flood, gazing out of the Smoking Room window, ‘be a Sunday.’ He watched the rain while it hissed in a myriad tiny rivers between the cobbles which paved the yard. ‘No news; nothing to do; a hanging over the house; a vile day. It only wanted the usual, decayed feeling of a British Sabbath to put the lid on it. And it is on; and it’s damn’ well tied on.’
Pike was slightly shocked. ‘Nothing to do with Sunday,’ he growled.
Flood laughed, a sound dismal and hollow. ‘Have a drink?’ he said. ‘We’d better get tight.’
Pike grunted. ‘By yourself!’ He jerked himself out of his chair and wandered from the room.
Flood gazed after him. Flood shrugged, and walked to the bell and pressed it. While he waited for his drink he kept glancing up to the ceiling. Faintly, there came down to his ear the sound, steady and rhythmic, of light, firm steps which went, across a small space, up, down … up, down.
Lucia was again in that room whence came the sound of pacing. Once more she sat upon the window-seat. A book lay open, face downwards, upon her lap. She said once:
‘Would you rather I stayed. Or went? Do I worry you?’
Selma Bronson did not pause in her walk. She answered, but her eyes though they looked into Lucia’s eyes did not seem to see them. She said:
‘Stay. Please stay. I would rather … I should not care to … I would be glad if you stay. Please.’
Lucia, not trusting her voice, nodded to show that she would. She felt suddenly a need for action; for any movement; any doing. She rose and crossed to the hearth and knelt beside it and stirred and fed the blazing fire.
She turned from this task with a quick movement. The sound of the footsteps had ceased.
Selma Bronson was standing beside her writing-table which was in a corner near the bay window. She was as motionless as just now she had been mobile. She was staring down at a sheet of paper which lay upon the blotting-pad. Lucia, watching, saw that there was a pencil in the hand upon which the woman was resting her weight. And now the body straightened and the pencil made one stroke upon the paper.
There was a little clatter as the pencil, discarded, rolled from desk-top to floor. The paper still between her fingers, the woman began again her pacing. Lucia, kneeling yet, watched her with an ache in her heart which seemed to send pain to the whole of her body.
Up, down … window, door … door, window … up, down …
Lucia found herself to be growing half-hypnotised by her watching of this ceaseless, never-varying movement. But she could not move, and she could not speak. Merely could she go on watching, turning her head … left, right; left, right … to follow that marching figure; that tall figure whose very beauty made its agony the more dreadful.
And now, as the march brought her abreast of the kneeling Lucia, the sheet of paper fluttered from her fingers. She did not notice its falling; she went on … window, door … door, window …
The sheet lay, a white square upon the dark carpet, by Lucia’s knee.
She stretched out a hand and picked it up. Unconsciously, using it as a lever to bring back her mind from this dazed state of watching, watching, she looked down at it. There seemed to be writing upon it. Still unthinking, she raised it nearer to her eyes. And she saw that there was no writing but a series of strokes—plain, upright strokes in ink. Three lines of them there were, each line stretching across the page. And all these, save only the last two, had been cancelled with the cross-stroke of a pencil.
There swept over Lucia a sudden, appalled rush of pity. Where a man might have pondered over these hieroglyphics and not seen for many moments their significance, Lucia understood with her first glance. How often, as a schoolgirl, had she not planned a chart such as this? Every stroke a day; every cancelled stroke a day gone. But her charts had been to mark a happiness to come! And this …
Again the pacing stopped. Selma Bronson stood over this woman who stared, white-faced, at the little paper. There came from Selma Bronson’s throat a sound which was a dreadful travesty of laughter. She said:
‘You know that?… It is silly … Very silly. But I do it because it hurts.’
Once more came the sound of her feet; a sound light and firm; a ceaseless and unchanging sound …
The day wore on. And nothing happened save the wind and rain. At two o’clock came the Chief Constable, driving himself in his battered-seeming car. He looked weary and dispirited, and a heavy frown marred his fair good-looks. He asked for Anthony. Pike spoke to him; told him that Colonel Gethryn was not expected before evening. He grunted thanks and went out to his car again. Pike followed him. Pike ventured:
‘Anything turned up, sir?’
Ravenscourt climbed into his car. He shut its door with a slam. He shook his head. He said, through the open window:
‘Nothing. Not even about this Curtain.’
Pike was left alone in the rain, his trousers were spattered with mud from the big car’s wheels.
The afternoon dragged itself by. The weather did not mind; if anything it grew worse. With the going of daylight, the wind, as always it does, seemed to increase in violence. And still the steady, slanting curtain of rain draped the world.
At six, Ravenscourt came back. Lucia saw him. She shook her head at his question.
‘But if he doesn’t come,’ she said, ‘he’ll telephone. He’s certain to. Shall I tell him to ring you up, too?’
Ravenscourt smiled; a tired twisting of his pale face. He said:
‘If he’s got anything.’
He would not stay for a drink. Once more his car roared out of the yard.
At six-thirty the telephone-bell pealed. Flood was at it first. But it was not Anthony who called. Sir Richard Brocklebank wished to know if Colonel Gethryn …
‘Sorry,’ said Flood shortly. ‘Not in. Any message?’
There was no message.
But Anthony did ring up. At half-past seven. This time Pike answered.
‘That you, sir?’ Pike said. ‘Good.’
‘Not coming down tonight,’ said Anthony’s voice. ‘Anything doing?’ He was curt. He sounded like a tired man in a hurry.
At the transmitter Pike shook his head wearily. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Colonel Ravenscourt’s been here after you twice. Would you ring him if you’ve got anything. And Sir Richard Brocklebank telephoned, sir. No message from him … Is there … How’re you getting on, sir?’
‘Can’t tell.’ The voice was very curt. ‘It’s a slow job. Slow, slow!… How’s Mrs Bronson?’
‘Same, sir. Wonderful, that control. But it’s pretty awful too. Mrs Gethryn’s with her all the time; shall I get her?’
‘No. Give her my love. And make her have a good dinner, Pike … The Carter-Fawcett, what about her?’
‘Nothing to report, sir. She didn’t leave the house all last night.’ Pike’s voice was savagely dismal.
‘Well, well!’ said the telephone. ‘I’ll be down in the morning. If you want me, ring Buckingham 87X4 or Mall 1736.’
‘Right, sir,’ said Pike. He hung up the receiver and wrote the numbers in his notebook. He went slowly upstairs and knocked upon the door at the left.
Again the dull, looming silence filled the house. It was, somehow, not broken by the screaming whistle of the wind and the rain’s unending hiss; rather was it intensified by them.