The Woman at The Door

by Warwick Deeping

  “I shouldn’t worry, Luce.”

  “Why not, sir?”

  “She happens to be rather pleased with life. Bloodhounds, Luce, the bloodhounds are expected to-morrow. She might have heard that Christ was re-appearing on earth. The bliss of the vindictive! Actually she said to me, ‘The dogs will smell her out.’ Nice person!”

  Luce took out his pipe.

  “That’s consoling. It means that she can sit and contemplate to-morrow’s possible ecstasy.”

  “Exactly so, Luce. But didn’t you say something about the car’s sparking plugs being dirty?”

  “I did. They are as foul, sir, as some people’s nasty little souls.”

  5

  She sat and waited for the time to pass.

  She would have said that the silence of the empty building was as complete as her silent acceptance of what the future held for her. But the room was not quite soundless. The clock on the mantelpiece was ticking. She had not been conscious of the sound, but its persistence penetrated her awareness. It roused her to sudden restlessness, an inward protest. It was like a hurrying and troubled heart. She rose, and going to the mantelpiece, took the clock in her hands and shook it, but the mechanism would not be thwarted. She resumed her seat, and her watching of the sky. The same trees were there. One of them, a tall Scotch fir, stretched out a flat bough like a hand held out for alms.

  She thought of the dog lying buried there in the garden. He had not escaped tragedy. Would she? Would Luce? And then it occurred to her that she would never see these familiar trees again, nor would she feel the solace of being shut up in this strange old building. What would her memories be, if there were to be memories? Something stirred in her like an unborn child. She rose, and going up the stairs, stood looking round the room that had sheltered her.

  Perhaps it was inevitable, this sudden troubling of her conscience, her shrinking from the final sacrifice he was making for her. It was not a question of remorse. Why involve him in this tragedy, in exile, in possible disillusionment? Had he not given her the one supreme thing? She should have blessed him for it, and strengthened by it, gone to give herself up. It was not too late. She could still shield him. And would he not come to understand that in surrendering herself, and setting him free she had given him a greater proof of her generosity?

  The submissive impulse moved her. Yes, she would go and say that she had taken food with her and hidden herself in the woods. Her love would know how to lie. She turned to the stairs and began to descend them. Then, something startled her, a sound that seemed immense in the hollow of the tower. The brass knocker on the green door! Could it be Luce? But he had one key with him, and the other key was in her pocket. The knocking was repeated. What should she do? She sat down on the stairs, tense but trembling.

  Silence. Almost, she fancied that she could hear the ticking of the clock in the room below. And her own heart! The courage had gone out of her. It seemed to have ebbed away in that repressive silence. Was it that she could not endure life now without him? But to sit still was torture. She got up and returned to the bedroom, and moving round the wall, stood looking obliquely out of the window.

  She saw a woman in the garden, a strange woman with a cigarette stuck in a large, red mouth. She was by the pear tree. What if the woman had seen her? She drew back along the wall. She remained for some minutes in a corner of the room, and then felt that she must look again, and covering the lower part of her face with her skirt, she crept back to the window. The woman had gone.

  Who was she? Some casual picnicker who had come to ask for water? She returned to her seat on the stairs, but all thought of surrender had gone from her. She felt that she could not go out alone and face all those strange faces and the utter and human solitude that would be hers. The horror of being stared at, questioned, shut up alone. Her mood became like the instinct of a live thing that struggles and resists.

  This waiting for the darkness seemed interminable. How incongruous things were! She would be wearing new shoes and another woman’s hat. She remembered that Luce had advised her to go shoeless to the gate and into the woods, and she took off her shoes and sat with them in her lap. Would it never grow dark? But the light was failing. She had noticed a cobweb hanging where the curve of the stairs met the wall, and now she could not distinguish the spider’s web. She rose, and descended the stairs, carrying her shoes.

  The sitting-room window was full of the afterglow, the trees black silhouettes. The extended hand of the Scotch fir was darkly appealing, and from it seemed to rise a little tongue of flame. She sat and watched the sky fade. The walls and furniture grew dim. The clock ticked on. Surely it was safe for her to go? She was in fever to go, and to put this crisis behind her.

  The tops of the trees merged into one dark mass. She rose, and going into the vestibule, unlocked the door and stood listening. Not a sound. She went out, relocked the door, and descending the steps, found them cold to her feet. Everything was obscure and still. What if she were to meet someone just as she reached the gate? But how unlikely. With frightened eyes looking this way and that she came to the gate, opened it, and passed out.

  Almost instantly she was among the trees. She sat down at the foot of a larch and put on her shoes. It was open woodland, patched with fern and rhododendron. The silence seemed supreme, but under her feet pine needles and twigs were faintly crepitant. Picking her way between the dark trunks she descended the hill, and with each step she seemed to breathe more freely. No one could have seen her. She came to the wire fence; she was touching it before she had realized its nearness. A rusty wire trembled. She stood there listening.

  A moment later she heard footsteps in the road below. Deliberate and casual, they approached the place where she had paused. Someone whistled the first few notes of “God Save the King,” and bending down she slipped through between the strands of wire. Luce heard the vibration of the wire, and the sound her feet made as she slithered down the bank. She emerged from the darkness within three yards of him.

  “God Save the King.”

  She had been warned against speaking. She felt his arm about her, and surrendered to it. They came to the gravel pit, and she could distinguish the dim shapes of car and caravan. She divined that other figure waiting to welcome her in comprehending and careful silence.

  She was quite close to Mr. Temperley, and the whispered words seemed to come to her out of the intimate darkness.

  “May all your troubles be over, my dear.”

  She put up her face in the darkness and was kissed. Life seemed to be an incredible, mute shadow-show. She found herself lying in one of the bunks of the caravan, and Luce was covering her with a blanket.

  “If we are stopped, lie still.”

  “Yes, John.”

  “Frightened?”

  “Not now.”

  The door was closed, and she was aware of the little curtained windows becoming faintly light as the car’s lamps switched on. The engine came to life. She felt the caravan moving out into the road.

  XX

  She was lying on the grass on the edge of a beechwood. The sun was behind her, and the downland landscape, like luminous silver, piled hill beyond hill under a sky that was cloudless. This high and open country was new to her, with its pale hills hazed with heat. The day was windless, and its stillness might have been part of her inward self which lay below the vallum of the old hill-fort, and gazed and wondered. Was it possible for life to be so spacious and tranquil and so full of fair weather as this landscape?

  She could see the road down there in the valley, a solitary farm, and sheep grazing. They looked like grey stones scattered about on the hillside. She felt very far from houses and people. A grass track led from the highroad into the calmness of these hills amid which her breathless self felt solitary and secure. Escape! Had the thing really happened? Not a leaf was moving on the beech trees. The silence was supreme save for the singing of a lark.

  From where she lay she could see the white roof of t
he caravan topping the green bank of the hill-fort. Luce had driven Mr. Temperley into Avebury, where the local inn would house him for the night. She watched the road, and felt like some little animal that had been let out of a cage into the sunlight.

  A sudden sound! It came from the wood behind her, and she was startled by it until she realized that the green tongues of innumerable leaves had been moved by a little wayward breeze. The flutter spread through the wood until every tree joined in the chorus. Why this agitation? What were the trees saying?

  A car had appeared in the road, a spot of dark blue, their car. She saw it pass the farm, and turn to take the grass track. It climbed slowly, with a slightly rolling motion, its radiator catching the sunlight. The breeze had died away, and the trees were still. She found herself at this moment more girl than woman; she was up and running down the hill to meet him.

  The car slowed down. She was aware of his very blue eyes searching her face.

  “Get in.”

  “No, I’ll stand here.”

  She climbed on to the running board, and the car went on past the beechwood, and through the break in the bank into the fort. A green canvas tent had been pitched close to the caravan, and in the shade of the van she had spread a white cloth and arranged on it her plates and cups, and a cake and a dish of bread and butter covered with a clean cloth.

  “Will Mr. Temperley be comfortable there?”

  “I think so.”

  “Somehow he’s so wonderful and precious, John.”

  “Our miraculous joss! But there are other people who can be included in the same category.”

  He had parked the car beside the van, and, leaning over half-timidly, she kissed him.

  “Did you remember the milk?”

  “I did.”

  She stepped down and instantly her face grew serious. It was as though that one word had become a symbol, bringing back to her all the beginning of things. She was conscious of a spasm of pain, secret stresses, a foreboding that seemed to have followed her even into this solitary place.

  “I’ll put the kettle on, John.”

  He was looking at her intently, and with compassionate understanding, but he did not look at her too long.

  “Yes, tea. I’m ready for it.”

  He could have argued that it was good for her that she should do things, the simple things that fill the lives of so many women. It might even be good for her that he should behave like the exacting male. She was down on her knees by the stove, and he could see the cleft between her breasts, and the curve of her neck under her very black hair. But if he chose to observe her as physician as well as lover it behoved him to censor and control big adjectives, and to remember that the thing one called sanity had to be cherished. He had seen men lose their precious sanity in the war, and stand mute and shivering, or tear at the soil like terrified animals trying to burrow into the earth. Fear had to be taken by the shoulder and thrust out of her life, and he knew that his hands would have to be both strong and gentle.

  He took the bottle of milk from the car, placed it on the cloth, and lay down on the grass.

  “Good to watch somebody else working.”

  She remained on her knees, somehow apart with her inward self.

  “Yes, John.”

  “I think our outfit is pretty complete. Found anything lacking?”

  “No.”

  He pulled out his pipe and pouch, and laying them beside him, turned on his back.

  “There’s a lark up there. Just a speck. He doesn’t seem to be worrying.”

  “He was there before you came.”

  “Good omen. Tell me, how long does the kettle take to boil?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “Kettles vary, I suppose? Large ones like men must take a devil of a time. Hallo, I hear a murmur.”

  She bent her head to listen.

  “Yes, just beginning.”

  “You know, Rachel, it always gives me a shock when I remember that the interesting primitives who lived up here had no tea and no tobacco.”

  “Hadn’t they?”

  “Hardly!”

  He was sensing her apartness, her absorption in some mood, the secret distraction of unresolved suspense. She seemed to be hiding herself from him behind the little pragmatical needs of the moment, her watching of the kettle, the putting of tea into the pot. What was it that she feared? Some last and fatal mischance, the drab face of the thing called justice, the dissolving of a dream? Such soul-shocks as she had suffered would not be healed in a day, and there was their final crisis waiting to be dared, the ultimate hazard of escape.

  She passed him his cup, and her eyes seemed to avoid his.

  “Do we go on to-morrow?”

  “Just as you please. I think Mr. Temperley will be quite happy pottering round Avebury.”

  She looked at the beech trees.

  “It is so very peaceful here. I have never seen country like this before.”

  “Plenty of sky. Switzerland will be full of sky and mountains.”

  Again she was silent, and he suffered her silence to remain like still water in which he might discover the reflection of things actual. He could understand that all the features of this new world must seem very strange to her, and that he himself was half a stranger. His complete involvement in her tragedy might convince her that he was no mere cad, a sexual opportunist, but might she not question the afterwards?

  They had finished the meal, and he was filling his pipe when she asked him that question, and he could imagine that it had been gathering shape and substance behind her silence.

  “Won’t you miss so many things, John?”

  “What things, my dear?”

  “People and places, and work?”

  He began to be wise as to what was troubling her.

  “People? I’m not a very sociable beast. Should I have taken the tower if I had liked chatter? It pleases me to watch people, sometimes, but I have found that when you have made contact with them one loses interest.”

  She gave him a slanting look.

  “Isn’t that rather a problem for me?”

  He smiled at her, and pointed with the stem of his pipe.

  “Wait a moment. We have got to get this matter settled. Besides, I’m not the only person to be considered. This sort of thing has always satisfied me, country and plenty of sky, and stodging about on my big feet and thinking about all the things that puzzle man. I like being quiet. But you?”

  She passed her hand over the grass.

  “I could go on like this for ever and ever.”

  “Sure?”

  “Peace, someone I can trust, who won’t make me afraid. Can’t you realize that after——.”

  “Yes, I can realize that.”

  “But I’m not at all clever. You are so much cleverer than I am.”

  “I have always hated clever people.”

  “But, John——.”

  “Yes, the little monkey minds, the people who are always advertising their nice tricks. You have what I want, what every man who is not a fool wants, gentleness and understanding.”

  She gave him a deep, devout look.

  “Have I, dear? I hope so. My only fear is, now, that I might spoil life for you.”

  He put out a big hand.

  “Come here, come and sit by me. Any other fear?”

  “Yes, I can’t help it, John. Every morning when I open my eyes I shall think, ‘They will find me to-day.’ ”

  He held her close.

  “No they won’t. This affair of ours is going to be one of the unsolved mysteries.”

  She did not answer him then in the way she wished. The inevitable words were to be uttered later. He was sitting in the mouth of the green tent watching the hills grow dim, and listening to little movements in the caravan. The near window was lit up, and suddenly he saw it grow dark. She had left the door half-open as though to let in the night air and a glimpse of the stars.

  “John.”

  H
e got up and went to the steps.

  “Not sleepy yet?”

  “No.”

  “Try counting sheep.”

  “John, I wish I could lean across and touch you if I wake in the night.”

  2

  Three people in a Mostyn two-seater made life appear somewhat crowded, especially so when Luce and his fifteen stone took up more than their just share of the space available, but Rachel, wedged in between these two men, was made to feel buttressed and secure. Mr. Temperley insisted upon a respect for the law, now that the breaking of it was less urgent. Also, he became curious as to the contents of Luce’s pockets.

  “What do you keep in them, my good man?”

  Luce was persuaded to turn out his pockets, and the exhibit included two pipes, a pouch, two boxes of matches and a note-book.

  “Three additional inches added to a figure that doesn’t err on the side of modesty.”

  “Sheer innocence.”

  “I suggest you transfer innocence to the door-pockets.”

  They steered for Cirencester and Chedworth, and near Cirencester Luce proposed that Rachel should wear a pair of tinted glasses. “Must I, John?” He smiled down at her serious face. “Does it matter? Moreover, you need another hat and mackintosh.” They did not drive into Cirencester, but Luce turned into a Roman road, and parked the car and caravan on the verge. If Mr. Temperley felt equal to it, he and Rachel could walk into Cirencester while Luce waited. Mr. Temperley agreed.

  “You are a damned autocrat, Luce.”

  “I think I look less evidential than you do, sir.”

  Mr. Temperley and Rachel walked into the city, and Mr. Temperley, discovering a shop that sold spectacles, entered it with Rachel.

  “I want a pair of tinted glasses for my niece. We are motoring. There’s a good deal of glare.”

  Rachel was fitted with glasses while Mr. Temperley sat on a chair and looked casual and benignant.

  “I think I’ll have a pair, too. Yes, something quite inexpensive.”

  Afterwards, he went with Rachel in search of a shop where she could buy her hat and mackintosh. She was wearing her giglamps, but Mr. Temperley had pocketed his. When they found a likely shop he became aware of her hesitation.