Nothing Venture

by Patricia Wentworth

  Rosamund, as usual, was smoking. She withdrew her cigarette and blew out a cloud of smoke before she said,

  “Won’t she let you speak to me? Poor old Jervis!” There was a light drawling contempt in her voice.

  Jervis smiled, that sudden, dangerous smile of his.

  “You are too attractive, he said. “You always were. One must defend oneself.”

  Rosamund drew at her cigarette.

  “I’ve been wondering where on earth I’d seen her before, and I’ve just got there. Used she to dance at Solano’s?”

  Jervis nodded.

  “I believe she did. Have you anything to say about it?”

  “No—I just wondered whether you knew.”

  “Certainly I knew. Is that all you wanted to say to me? Shall we go back and have our coffee?”

  “It isn’t nearly all. Your coffee will have to wait. I’ve got a lot of things to say to you.”

  “Say them,” said Jervis.

  She threw away the end of her cigarette. It fell into the water and with a little hiss went dead.

  “Why did you get engaged to me?” she said suddenly.

  “Why does one get engaged to anyone?”

  “You weren’t in love with me.”

  He shrugged his shoulders very slightly.

  “Or you with me. Is there any object in digging up these ancient remains?”

  “Yes—I’d like to know why you ever thought of marrying me.”

  She was lighting another cigarette, and she looked, not at Jervis, but at the spurting flame of the match. Jervis looked at it too. It licked the paper and blackened it; infinitesimal red points strung themselves together where the edge of the paper had been; a tiny spiral of smoke went up.

  “One thinks about marrying—and when you’ve got as far as that you look round for someone to marry. You were adjacent, you were heavily backed by the family, and you appeared to be quite pleased with the idea.”

  Rosamund threw her head back and looked at him out of half-closed eyes.

  “I was thrust on you against your will? Is that what you’re trying to say?”

  “Not in the least! You might know by now that I don’t try and say things—I say them. It was a matter of mutual convenience. We both got something out of it.”

  Rosamund drew rather a long breath.

  “Did you wonder why I broke it off?”

  “Oh no—it was perfectly obvious.”

  “You think I did it to get the money.”

  Jervis’ eyes met hers for a moment. Their expression was one of amusement. It stung her into a hot protest.

  “What a foul mind you’ve got! No wonder you were livid, if you thought I’d done a beastly thing like that!”

  Jervis laughed.

  “Perhaps you’d like to explain why you did do it.”

  “I can’t. But it wasn’t anything to do with the money. You can’t possibly believe a thing like that!”

  “Can’t I?”

  “No, you can’t. It’s not true anyway. And if you hadn’t rushed off and married the first girl who vamped you, everything would have been all right.”

  “It must have been a nasty jolt for you. Pretty good staff work—wasn’t it?”

  Rosamund swung round and stood with her back to him for a moment. Then she said over her shoulder,

  “You needn’t rub it in.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” said Jervis—“I never did. Don’t you think we might go back to the others?”

  “No.”

  “Is there anything else you want to say to me? Because if not—”

  “Of course there is!”

  “Let’s get on with it then.”

  Rosamund turned round. Her face never varied from its even pallor, but a still paler line seemed to have been drawn from nose to mouth. It ran from the nostril to the corner of the lip on either side, and it made her look ten years older.

  “You’re as hard as nails,” she said. “It’s no use trying to work on your feelings, because you haven’t got any.”

  “Yes?”

  She made a slight gesture with her cigarette.

  “Jervis—I’ve got to have some money. I can’t go on—the situation’s impossible—I owe about five hundred.”

  Jervis frowned at the running water.

  “You can send the bills to me. I’ll settle them this time, but not again. After this you’ll have to make do on your allowance.”

  “Three hundred a year?”

  He looked at her, and looked away again.

  “If I make it four, will you keep within it?”

  “No—I can’t. It’s no good pretending that I can. If Uncle Ambrose had meant me to live on four hundred a year, he ought to have brought me up differently.”

  Jervis was smiling again.

  “I think you were twenty before you were here, except on a visit. It strikes me you were pretty thoroughly brought up by then.”

  “Whoever brought me up, it wasn’t on the four hundred a year standard. I can’t do it. If Uncle Ambrose had known you were going to marry someone else, he’d have left me properly provided for. He talked about it once before we were engaged, and he said he’d leave me twenty-five thousand.”

  “What’s the good of talking like that?”

  “Give me that twenty-five thousand and let me clear out. I don’t bring you very good luck—do I? Well, let me clear out. I’ve got a good opening that I could take if I’d some capital. Let me go, and I’ve an idea that it’ll be better for all of us.”

  “My dear Rosamund,” said Jervis, “I’ll see you at Jericho before I’ll give you twenty-five thousand pounds!”

  Rosamund drew at her cigarette. The pale lines were a little paler.

  “Jericho?” she said, “You won’t get rid of me as easily as that. You’d better think again—second thoughts are best.”

  Jervis laughed.

  “I’m afraid I might think forever without your getting any nearer that twenty-five thousand. And now I think we’ll go back to the others.”

  He turned as he spoke, and set a brisk pace back along the path. Rosamund walked beside him in silence. Just as they came to where the shade ceased, she laughed and said,

  “It would have saved a lot of trouble if we had married each other—wouldn’t it?”

  Jervis stepped out into the sunlight.

  “Do you think so?” he said.

  She could not see his face.

  XXVI

  Nan got up to say good-bye at a quarter to three. Her heart was like a hot burning coal. She had had to sit by Robert Leonard, to take her coffee from his hand, and to listen whilst he talked. Her burning anger lit a bright colour in her cheeks and made her eyes brilliant. She felt as if anything she touched would be liable to scorch or go up in a little puff of smoke. It was a dreadful feeling of course, but it made her very sure of herself.

  When she got up to go, Mr Leonard looked at his watch and exclaimed.

  “I’d no idea it was so late! You’ve beguiled me from my duties, Mrs Jervis. I ought to be attending to my incubators at this very moment. Give me a lift as far as my gate, will you, Jervis? My car’s a fixture till I can get someone out from Croyston.”

  Impossible to refuse of course. Nan wondered whether Jervis would have liked to refuse.

  He said, “All right,” with an air of complete indifference.

  At any rate she wouldn’t have to sit next to the man. F.F. would have that pleasure. F.F. wouldn’t mind of course. It was only she who felt like an exploding bomb when Robert Leonard was anywhere about. She got in beside Jervis, and heard the other two settling themselves behind her, F.F. full of amiable chatter.

  “Did you have a car in South America? I forgot where you were. Were you ever in Mexico? Shocking roads, but not as bad as San Pedro. The Madalena roads are pretty hard to beat. I had an old flivver there. She was a wonder. She jumped the potholes like a bird.”

  They moved off, slid down the drive, and coasted as fa
r as Mr Leonard’s gate. He got out and made his farewells.

  “You must come and see my place some day, Mrs Jervis. Thanks for the lift, Jervis. Good-bye, Mr Fazackerley.”

  “Av revoir,” said Ferdinand.

  The afternoon was very hot. There was nothing surprising in the fact that Robert Leonard found it necessary to pass a handkerchief across his forehead. Ferdinand, looking back, admitted this, but could not quite understand why Mr Leonard should have quite so shaky a hand. He began to speculate about Mr Leonard. The man had had his hand clenched on the seat between them. When he took hold of the handle to open the door, the hand shook—most undeniably it shook. As he stood mopping his brow and watching the car out of sight, it was still shaking. And he had drunk nothing but lemonade, so it wasn’t that.

  Jervis wasn’t thinking about Robert Leonard. He looked once at Nan, and was aware of distinct relief. She had not golden hair, sea-blue eyes, regular features, or a statuesque figure. He was feeling a strong distaste for all these things. Nan’s firm round chin, her brown hair, her steady grey eyes, and the rather childish contour of her face were as complete a contrast as could be found to the charms of his cousin Rosamund. His gaze dwelt upon his wife with approval.

  They began to descend the hill, and before they came to the steepest part he put the car into bottom gear. For a couple of hundred yards the gradient was about one in seven, and the surface bad. They had on their right a high bank out of which the road had been cut, and on the left a narrow strip of rough grass with an occasional scrawny bush, and beyond that a low parapet of loose stones which defended a sheer drop to the sea below.

  Jervis had scarcely changed down, when amongst his other thoughts there slid into his mind a conviction that there was something wrong with the car. The conviction became a certainty and took entire possession of him. The steering was behaving oddly; the wheel wobbled, and there was a drag to the left. A drag to the left was a drag to the cliff. The wheel kicked in his hand. He wrenched it over and jammed on the brakes, and as he did so a number of things happened all at once. The near front wheel came off and went bounding down the hill, its scarlet and black catching the sun. The front axle came down with a heavy bump on the left. The car swung round, slid, tilted, and fell over with a crash. Robert Leonard heard the sound of it as he walked up the path from the gate to his house. He stood still. Then he walked on again.

  On the three people in the car, two were taken entirely by surprise. Ferdinand Fazackerley had a moment of wondering why the road should be so much rougher going down than it had been coming up. Then he saw the black and scarlet wheel go bowling down the road like a child’s hoop gone crazy. And then the car turned over and threw him clear. Nan did not see the wheel or notice the jolting. She was looking over the steep edge of the cliff. She had never seen anything so blue in all her life. The tide was high, and the water came up to the foot of the cliff. The first thing she knew of the accident was a violent jolt, and then the side of the car dropping away from her on her left. She gave a little cry and put out both her hands. Something struck her right shoulder. Then the car turned right over with a sound of smashing glass, and she was on her hands and knees on the rough grass with the leather seat pressing down upon her back.

  Ferdinand Fazackerley picked himself up out of the dust of the road. He felt rather dazed. He wasn’t sure whether he had been thrown clear or whether he had jumped, but he was in the middle of the track with the knees of his trousers torn and the car across the road, very neatly upside down, her bonnet hitched up on the stone parapet. He couldn’t see Jervis, and he couldn’t see Nan. He felt grateful for the parapet, because if it hadn’t been there, the car wouldn’t have been there either, but at the bottom of the cliff like a smashed egg. He came out of his daze with a jerk and ran forward just as Nan crawled out from under the front seat. She pulled herself up by the wall and said,

  “Where’s Jervis?”

  Ferdinand ran round to the other side of the car.

  She said, “Where’s Jervis?” again.

  She couldn’t run, because her legs didn’t feel as if they belonged to her. She crawled round the car, holding on to it. It looked so odd upside down. The sides were smooth; her fingers slipped on the paint. She got round to the other side and saw Ferdinand dragging Jervis clear. Jervis did not move or help himself at all. Then she saw his face. And when she saw his face, she forgot all about her legs not belonging to her, and she let go of the car and ran to him. There was a most dreadful moment when she thought he was dead. Everything stood still. Her thoughts wouldn’t move. She couldn’t take her breath, and a blackness like the darkness of a nightmare made a wall all around her. It was like being buried alive. She did not know how long it lasted.

  Ferdinand’s voice came through the blackness. His hand shook her arm.

  “Nan! Nan!”

  Nan became aware that she was sitting on the grass with her back against the stone parapet. There was something heavy on her lap, and as she became aware of it, it moved. She looked down through the blackness that was thinning away, and saw that it was Jervis’ head that had moved. A moment later she realized that she was crying. The tears were running down her face and wetting Jervis’ hair. She began to look for her handkerchief, not to dry her eyes but to dry his hair; but before she could find it he muttered something unintelligible, opened his eyes, put his hand to his head, and sat up. His coat was torn, and a great smear of blood and dust ran all down one side of his face. He put his hand to his head again, frowned at Nan, and said,

  “What are you crying for? Are you hurt?”

  The tears ran down Nan’s face. They ran into the corners of her mouth and tasted salt; they ran down on to her neck and trickled away under her dress. She didn’t want them to run down like that, but they just came. And she couldn’t find her handkerchief. She complained about it out loud.

  “I can’t find my handkerchief.” The last word was split in two by a choking sob. It was a devastating depth of misery to be sitting drying in the dust, with Jervis scowling at her, and not to be able to find a handkerchief.

  “Is that why you’re crying?” said Jervis.

  “I thought you were dead!” said Nan; and as she said it Ferdinand’s hand came over her shoulder with a clean folded bandanna.

  It was of a lively shade of purple, with an orange and green thunderstorm in the middle and some rather lurid scarlet lightning. Nan mopped her eyes with it. As soon as she had a handkerchief she didn’t want to cry any more. You can’t dry yourself very well with silk, but she did her best.

  Jervis looked at her with gloomy dissatisfaction. What was she getting at? It would be a very good thing for her if he was dead, because she would be free and quite well provided for. It was ridiculous to cry about it. But she had been crying. The wet on his cheek was blood, but the wet on his head wasn’t. She must have been crying all over his hair.

  He had got as far as this, when Ferdinand addressed him.

  “Anything broken?”

  Up to this moment there had been a closed door between him and everything that had happened before he sat up and saw Nan crying. Now this door suddenly burst open, and he looked through it and saw the near front wheel of his car go bouncing and bounding downhill with a kind of demented joie de vivre.

  “Broken?” he said. Then he scrambled on to his feet. “What made that damned wheel come off?”

  He stood staring at the car, with her three wheels in the air and her bonnet hitched up on the parapet. Her last drunken lurch had carried half of it away. The stones had gone down two hundred feet into the sea.

  “If I hadn’t yanked her round a bit, she’d have gone too,” said Jervis.

  Ferdinand agreed.

  “That is so,” he said soberly. “It was a mighty near thing—a mighty—near—thing. I’m not an inquisitive man, but I’d like to know what made that wheel come off.”

  XXVII

  No one was any the worse. Jervis had a scratch on the cheek and a bump on the
back of the head. Nan had the consciousness that she had made a fool of herself. Ferdinand had a pair of trousers which would never be the same again. And the car had a broken windscreen, a buckled mud-guard, and a badly dented bonnet—negligible injuries when contrasted with what might have been.

  A breakdown tender came out from Croyston, retrieving the missing wheel at the bottom of the hill. Three dusty and disreputable people walked back to the Tetterleys’ to use the telephone and wash.

  Mr Leonard, who was emerging from a hen-house, saw them pass. He did not think that they had seen him. He stepped back into the house. Presently he saw Walters, the King’s Weare chauffeur, drive past in the old Napier saloon, and a little after that again he watched him return with Jervis, Nan, and Ferdinand Fazackerley.

  Jervis and Ferdinand went into Croyston to see about the car. Nan had a bath and tried to forget that she had told Jervis she was crying because she thought he was dead. She put on her grey and silver dress and sat on the shady side of the lawn waiting for them to come home. They were late for dinner.

  When the fruit was on the table and the servants had left the room, Nan leaned back in her chair and said,

  “Why did that wheel come off?”

  She spoke to Ferdinand, and with a lift of the eyebrows and a wave of the hand Ferdinand passed the question on.

  “Well, that’s for Jervis to say.”

  “I don’t know,” said Jervis. “Walters swears he went over the wheel-nuts with a brace only yesterday—but then of course he’d be bound to say that.”

  Ferdinand picked up a grape, looked at it, and bit it neatly in half.

  “How long’s he been here?”

  “Fifteen years.”

  “Methodical guy?”

  “What do you mean by methodical?”

  Ferdinand removed the seeds from the other half of the grape and swallowed it like a pill.

  “Well—take me. I’m not methodical—if I’ve got a car, I run her till she stops, and then I get hold of the nearest expert and I put it up to him to say what’s wrong. That’s my way, but I’m free to confess that it’s not methodical. Now Walters looks to me like one of those guys that’s got a place for everything and everything in its place—a day when he oils her, and a day when he greases her, and a day when he takes her to bits, and a day when he goes over her with a spanner tightening things up—to say nothing of powdering her nose and touching her up with lipstick. Isn’t that so?”