Nothing Venture

by Patricia Wentworth

  “The wretched Alfred,” said Jervis, “is in for it. He’s new, and in a blue funk. What’s the odds he drops the whole caboodle the first time Monk lets him carry the tray?” Here, you’ll pour out the tea—won’t you?”

  Nan approached the tea with a good deal of fellow-feeling for Alfred. The heavy teapot, which she could hardly lift; the ornate and hideous urn; the sugar-basin, big enough to serve an early Victorian family of fifteen or so; the awkward high-shouldered milk-jug; and the tray itself, so weighty that it filled her with respect for Monk’s muscular control, combined as a solid symbol of wealth and social position. There slipped into her mind the glancing thought that Mrs Grundy would be very fitly served from a set like this.

  She looked up to ask Jervis if he took sugar, and caught his eye with a dark gleam in it.

  “Hideous—aren’t they?” he said.

  XVII

  Nan sat up in bed in the dark. Something had wakened her, but she didn’t know what it was. At first the darkness seemed to fill the room, pressing in upon her so that the posts of the bed, the red hangings, which she had pushed back as far as possible, and the big wardrobe, which was somewhere on the opposite side of the room, were all lost in an even velvet dark. Then the curtain at the far window moved in some unseen current of air, and a pale luminous streak divided the darkness. The immediate effect was to make the room seem immensely large. A moment before, everything had been pressing in upon her; she could have touched the walls with her outstretched hand. And now, with a puff of wind, everything was immensely far away. The suddenness of it made her feel dizzy. She watched the streak of light, and tried to steady herself. It came and went, and came and went again.

  Nan sat bolt upright, one hand hard on the bed and the other at her throat. She had waked like that, and she had not moved yet. Then, as the curtain was first sucked in against the window and then on a veering gust blown back into the room, her hand dropped and she took a long breath. It was bright moonlight outside. The blown curtain let the moonlight in, and it filled the room with an uncertain dusk. She could see the bed-posts against it, and the wardrobe like a black cave. Then everything was dark again as the curtain fell back into place. She drew another long breath. It must have been the wind that had waked her. She pushed back her hair and relaxed. It was rather horrid to find yourself sitting up in the dark and not know how you had got there. For a moment she had not known where she was—in what bed, in what room, in what place.

  The curtain blew out again and fell slowly back. The light flickered and the curtain fell. A rumble of thunder sounded far away. This time she saw the curved end of the couch and the humped outline of one of the big armchairs. She was in the big bedroom which belonged to the mistress of King’s Weare. It was absurd, and a little frightening—no, not a little—very. She wished with all her heart that they had given her the little room with the bright chintzes that was over the study. And then all at once she wondered if that was Rosamund’s room, and she was glad to be here, and glad that Jervis had let them put her here. She knew that he was next door in the room which had always been his. It gave her confidence to remember that he was there.

  She pulled up a pillow behind her back and watched the moonlight run across the floor like a wave flung up by the tide. Like a wave it ran back again. She could see all the furniture now, mysteriously soft and large. A pleasant drowsiness began to steal over her. She thought back to the evening before. Jervis had taken her over the house. She had made great friends with Bran. She wished people were as easy to make friends with as dogs. The thought of Mrs Mellish was rather daunting—so overwhelming respectable, so unyieldingly decorous. At dinner she had worn her grey dress and found it very supporting. Monk was not nearly so frightening as Mrs. Mellish though. She discerned distinct traces of humanity in Monk, and to the nervous Alfred her heart went out in sympathy. One could hardly imagine Mrs Mellish with a Christian name …… Harriet perhaps—or Eliza. She wondered whether anyone ever called her by it now.

  A drowsy warmth flowed over her; she slipped a little further down in the bed. She had wondered how the evening would pass, and she could hardly tell how it had passed. They had talked—and Jervis had read the paper. She couldn’t remember what they had talked about, but it had been quite easy. He had read bits out of the paper and been very angry about something someone had said at a political meeting. She could remember the way he looked when he was angry, but she couldn’t remember what the politician had said. The time had slipped away like pleasantly flowing water—water flowing softly. “Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song.” That was Spenser—or was it? She was slipping down into soft flowing waters of sleep, when all of a sudden they ebbed away and she was awake again, her heart beating and her eyes staring into the darkness.

  It wasn’t the flapping of the curtain that had waked her before, and it wasn’t the flapping of the curtain that had waked her now. It was a sound—not in the room—somewhere else. Now that she heard it, she could remember that she had heard it before. The memory was like an echo just caught on the edge of sound. She did not yet know what it was that she had heard. And then, as she listened, it came again—a faint whining noise, followed by what sounded like a footstep. It was so faint that it puzzled her to guess why it should have roused her from her sleep.

  She threw back the bed-clothes and sat on the edge of the bed, listening all the while. The sound came again—a long faint whine, and a distant padding step. The two things together said Bran; but instead of reassurance a wave of fear rushed in. Bran—downstairs in the hall—padding up and down and whining … It frightened her beyond her own power of knowing why.

  She slipped down on the floor, went barefoot to the door, and stood with the wooden knob in her hand, summoning up her courage to open it. The knob was cold, and very smooth with age; it was mahogany like the heavy door. Just above her hand there was a bolt. She could slip the bolt and get back into bed again.

  She turned the knob and opened the door; and as she did so, the curtain blew in with the draught and the moonlight ran across the floor. She stepped outside and closed the door behind her, holding to it. There was a soft woolly mat under her feet.

  Her room was at the end of a short passage. The passage gave upon the stair head. The dog’s whine and the sound of his padding feet came up the well of the stair.

  She latched the door and went along the passage to the head of the stairs. It was not dark here. The moon struck through a long window set with painted glass, bleaching its colours and making them like colours seen in a dream. Nan leaned on the rail and looked over into the dark hall. The padding and the whining had stopped. She had a sense of the great beast standing down there, listening and looking up. She called softly,

  “Bran—Bran—” and immediately she heard him take the stair. She saw him for a moment, huge, and black against the lighted window, said his name again, and then he was pressing against her, jerking his head up under her hand and whimpering.

  “What is it?” said Nan. “What is it, Bran?”

  He nuzzled her hand and whined.

  “Don’t you like the wind?”

  This was a most reassuring thought. Some dogs hated wind. But it wasn’t so windy.

  All at once Nan was twice as frightened as she had been before. She wanted to get back to her room and bolt herself in. She took. Bran by the collar, and he ran with her. She was breathing hard as she shot the bolt.

  When she turned from the door, she saw Bran reared on his hind legs at the window with the curtain blowing round him. The moonlight threw a monstrous shadow almost to her feet. His nails scraped on the sill.

  She ran to him and pulled away the curtain.

  “What is it? What’s the matter, Bran?”

  He quivered and blew against the glass. With her hand on his neck she could feel his hackles rise. She pressed against him and looked out. The window looked to the south-west. It was open at the top. Bran pushed the glass with his nose and whimpered. It was a heavy
old-fashioned window, and Nan strained as she raised it. The wind flooded the room—a soft, damp wind—and she and Bran leaned out together.

  The moon was going down the western sky. By leaning far out Nan could see her in a clear dark pool ringed about with clouds that looked like icebergs. All the sky was wracked with cloud except for the one deep pool which held the moon, and between the cloud and the wet earth the wind blew joyfully. Nan could have run with Bran and the wind; she could have run barefoot over the grassy downs. She thought of this as she hugged Bran and felt the wind blow past them.

  The terrace beneath the window looked like grey blotting-paper with symmetrical blots of ink at regular intervals. The blots were flower-beds full of crimson and scarlet and orange and flame-coloured snapdragons. They had been brilliant under the grey sweep of the rain; now, under the moon, they were blots of ink. It was queer to think of all those bright colours asleep.

  The terrace was wide. A low balustrade guarded it. Then the grass fell away, shadowy, mysterious, to the unseen ravine, whose waters made a deep undertone to the soughing of the wind.

  All at once the moonlight drained away. The pool of clear sky was gone. The clouds had fallen in upon it. Nan could see them move darkly as the wind drove them. And then under her hand she felt Bran’s great throat muscles thrum to a growl too faint to reach her ears. She pressed closer to him and whispered,

  “What is it?”

  He flung up his head impatiently. The thrumming went on. A gleam of light slipped out between two hurrying clouds. A far off rumble seemed to answer Bran.

  Nan rubbed her cheek against his ear.

  “Darling lamb—don’t you like thunder? Is there going to be a storm?”

  He shook himself free and leaned forward. She could hear him growling now. A pale violet flare changed the sky, and was gone again. Bran quivered and snuffed the wind. Nan pulled at his collar, and might just as well have pulled at the hasp of the window.

  A second flare lit everything with a sudden brilliance. Nan saw the black shadow of the ravine, the ink-black trees beyond it, and the curve of the cliff. It was when it was gone that she knew she had seen something else—a man on the edge of the ravine—a black shape on the edge of the dark ravine. And the shape was the shape of Robert Leonard. There was the forward thrust of the head, and the strong heavy frame.

  Bran jerked under her hand and gave tongue with a deep, angry baying sound.

  Another flash came, and showed no shape of any man at all. The storm went by far off with no more than the lowest rumble of thunder. It left the night to a formless dusk. If anyone moved in it, he would not be seen even as a shadow. Nan did not think that anyone moved in it now.

  Bran had stopped growling. He snuffed at the wind, threw up his nose with a sharp sound, half bark, half howl, and dropped to the floor.

  Nan became aware that she was very tired and very cold. She pulled the window down, and felt that if it had been to do again, she would have let it be; her hands were so chilled and heavy. She left the curtain drawn back, found the black, shadowy bed, and crept into it, huddling the clothes about her. She heard Bran throw himself down on the floor beside the bed with a heavy flop. She was asleep almost as soon as he was.

  XVIII

  The day came up in a sea fog which lifted before eleven. It left the grass grey with dew and every tree and flower hung with tiny brilliant drops which made rainbows in the sun.

  Nan had slept late. She came downstairs to find that Jervis had breakfasted and gone out. When the fog lifted, she took a book out on to the terrace and sat on the low balustrade looking over to the ravine. The grey stone of the terrace was dry already, but the earth in the formal beds was dark. The snapdragons had lost their diamond points of dew; they made a rich pattern of colour against the grey background. The house was of grey stone too. There were creepers on this south-west wall—wisteria, clematis, and a climbing rose. The rose was not in bloom, but the bright violet stars of the clematis glowed like stained glass against the green of the wistaria leaves.

  Nan looked up at her window and wondered if she had really stood there in the dead of night and seen Robert Leonard by a flash of lightning. A little shiver went over her. She had only to shut her eyes, and she could see him against the pale violet flare. She looked down at Bran lying on the stone at her feet with his nose between his paws.

  Jervis hailed her from under the wall.

  “Would you like to come and see the waterfall?”

  She looked over the balustrade and saw him below her, bareheaded, looking up. A drop of three feet on the terrace side was a good ten to the path below. Jervis was gay and smiling. He had very much the look of being at home. He wore an old brown shooting-coat and knicker-bockers. Bran got up, put his fore feet on the balustrade, and looked over at him, pricking his ears. His nose quivered slightly. He made no sound.

  “I’d love to come,” said Nan.

  “You’ll want thick shoes—everything’s sopping.”

  “These are the thickest I’ve got. I don’t mind getting wet.”

  She ran down the steps in the middle of the terrace, and he met her, frowning.

  “You’ll get drenched. There are some gum boots in the cloakroom—I’ll get them for you.”

  Nan looked from her feet to his and laughed irrepressibly.

  “I’d fall out of them!”

  “No, they’re—I mean they’ll fit you all right.”

  Then they were Rosamund’s. Nan blushed to the roots of her hair with pure rage. Did he think she would wear Rosamund’s shoes?

  She ran across the path and down the wet green slope, calling to Bran. When Jervis caught her up, he said angrily,

  “Why did you go off like that? And why on earth don’t women have decent shoes? You’ll get absolutely soaked.”

  “I don’t mind. I haven’t got country shoes, because I don’t live in the country.”

  “You’ll have to get some.”

  Her heart jumped. Would she? What did he mean? Did he mean anything? Did he want her to live here? And if he did want her to, could she do it? She didn’t know.

  She looked up at him with a faint smile which became suddenly tremulous. She felt like a child at a party where the other children were playing a game she did not know. She did not know Jervis’ game, or how he wanted her to play it. She wondered how he would look, and what he would say, if she were to ask him just straight out.

  They were walking down a steep slope. Sometimes it was so steep that it was difficult not to run. Once Jervis caught her arm to steady her, and once she turned her foot on a rabbit hole and grabbed at him with both hands. Bran kept ahead of them. Every now and then he looked back as much as to say, “This place is mine, and I’m showing it to you. Do hurry up!”

  The sound of falling water came nearer every minute. On the terrace it was an undertone; but as they went down the slope, it swallowed every other sound and rose to a dominant roar. There were trees between them and the water. The grassy slope ended with a three-foot drop to a path. They turned inland, and the path wound between the trees. The thundering rush of the water was below them now, but the trees hid the fall. Then the path twisted, and they came out upon a flat open space. From the right the headlong steam came hurrying down a steep rocky channel. A light bridge spanned it at its narrowest point a few yards from where they stood. Below them was the fall, the sound of it like the sound of an avalanche.

  Nan stood by the railing which guarded the edge and looked over. A mass of foaming water fell forty feet sheer to a black pool. The ravine narrowed to a cleft, and within this cleft the water fell. The sides of it were dark and slippery. And beyond the black pool, which lay in shadow, the sunlight glittered on the sea. The spray came up into her face.

  “It’s high tide, so you’re seeing it at its best. Watch that wave come in.”

  Nan watched, and saw a big wave rear itself and come driving through the mouth of the ravine, to break in foam and spray against the spray and foam of t
he fall. The black pool churned and flung up yellowish spume. In its violent movement it was no longer black, but a deep molten amber. The crests of its swirling waters were gold, and gold-orange, and white. The ebb of the broken wave dragged back a milky stream into the sea.

  “You get the best view from the bridge,” said Jervis.

  “Does the sea always come up to the pool?”

  “Yes—except at the ebb of a spring tide. A high flood tide will break half way up the fall. It’s a fine sight. Come and see it from the bridge. Here, Bran! Hi over!”

  Bran cocked his ears, lifted his head, and raced ahead of them to the bridge, where he turned with a joyful woof and then ran forward. But as he came on to the bridge, he checked so suddenly that he slid a couple of feet on the wet planks before he could stop himself. He came to a standstill with all four feet together, and immediately sprang back growling.

  “What’s up, Bran?” said Jervis. “What is it, you old fool? Hi over!”

  The hair on Bran’s neck stood up. He backed gingerly, lifting his feet as if he were on ice, and growling all the time.

  Jervis strode forward and caught him by the collar.

  “Hi over!” he said. “What’s the matter with you?”

  Bran beat with his tail, whined, and pulled away.

  “He’s frightened,” said Nan rather breathlessly.

  Jervis threw her an impatient look.

  “Do you think he’s a lap-dog? I won’t have him made into one! He’ll do what he’s told. Now, Bran—what’s all this? Hi over!”

  Bran crouched down, cocked his ears, dropped them, and beat with his tail upon the ground.

  “Over!” said Jervis.

  Bran licked the air as near his master’s hand as he could reach and thumped again.