Fallen Into the Pit

made the most of it, but somehow it was immediately apparent that this was not the occasion for such behavior. The voices, both of them, had overtones which raised the blood to their cheeks hotly.

“I’m sorry you had to be marooned with such an uncongenial company.” Such a tight, dark voice, a disembodied pain. “It could just as easily have been someone more pleasing. Charles, for instance!”

“Oh, lord!” groaned Io. “I expected that! Must you carry on like a bad-tempered child?”

“I hope to God,” he said, “there are no children in any way resembling me. It would be better to put them away quietly if there are.”

“How can you talk like that! I suppose you’re half-tight,” said Io viciously.

“Not even half. What’s the use, when it doesn’t take?”

And now it was palpably too late to do anything about it. There they were, crouching mouse-still in the loft, holding their breath with shock, and not even looking at each other any more, because it was as disturbing as looking into a mirror. It would be awful if the two below should ever find out that they had been overheard. It was awful having to sit here and listen, but it was far too late to move.

The voice resumed, corrosive and unnatural in the void quiet, under the liquid lash of the rain.

“I can’t make you out. I call it cowardice, to carry on as if you had nothing to live for, as if you were crippled, or something, just because things don’t fall into your hand. For God’s sake, what happened to you during the war? You got the reputation of being able to stand up to anything, but it must have been a mistake.”

“It was a mistake,” he said harshly, “the worst I ever made. The intelligent people lay down, for good.”

“You make me mad!” she said furiously. “Moping like a sick cow, for want of your own way! And you haven’t even the wits to see that if you’re not careful, and don’t pull yourself together, you could die yet. Do you want people to believe you’re a murderer? The police think so already.”

“Why not? I am—a hundred times over.”

“Don’t go on talking like that! What happened in the war wasn’t your fault, and it’s over. And anyhow, most people found your part of it rather admirable,” she said indignantly.

“Admirable!” he said, in a soft, indrawn howl. “My good God almighty!”

“Well, I didn’t invent your reputation. I can’t help it if you don’t like being a hero!”

“I don’t like it!” he shouted hoarsely. “I loathe it! Don’t insult me with it! I never want to hear it from you, whatever the damned herd choose to think. Hero! Oh, yes, it’s a fine thing to be a hero!—to have the identity ripped clean out of you—to be violated—in the middle of your being—”

It was awful, frightening; his voice broke in a terrible ugly sound, and then there was just an almost-silence, full of a sort of heaving and struggling for breath, like a drowning man fighting to regain his footing. Dominic turned his face right away from Pussy’s sight, and leaned hard against the shelves, because he was trembling. His inside felt hollow and molten-hot. His heart hurt him. He wanted to think that Chad was really a little drunk, but he didn’t believe it. He wasn’t very experienced, but he knew a true grief from a drunken one even by its sound. And now somebody was crying. Io was crying, very quietly and laboriously and angrily, muffling it in her hands and the shadows and an inadequate handkerchief. And the painful quaking of the air which emanated from Chad had suddenly stilled into a listening silence.

“Why are you crying? As you said, it’s over. And if it wasn’t, you’ve no reason to shed any tears over it—you find it admirable.”

“I find you detestable,” cried Io furiously.

“I know! You’ve made that quite plain.” And after an uneasy moment of the rain’s song he said with sour, grudging gentleness: “Don’t cry, Io! It isn’t worth it.”

“I’m not crying! Go away! Get to hell out of here, and leave me alone!”

He seemed to hesitate a moment, and then the heel of his shoe rang violently on the threshold, and he ran lurching through the downpour away from her.

Instant upon his going, she began to cry in earnest, candidly and stormily in a long, diminishing outburst, until her tears and the thunderstorm ebbed together. She went out slowly, plashing mournfully across the gravel path starred with sudden pools, and in a few minutes the two in the loft could move and breathe again. They stirred and looked at each other with quick, evasive, scared glances.

“Wasn’t it awful? If they’d heard us!”

“Awful!”

They relaxed, and sat trembling, stiff with bracing themselves in one position, all large, wild eyes in the green gloom under the skylight.

“I’ve been worrying about her,” said Pussy, “for a long time. You know, it’s true what she said—your father thinks it was him who did the murder. Doesn’t he?”

“I don’t know. I tried to tell him it was crazy, but I’m afraid he does think it. I know he’s making an awful mistake.”

“He jolly well mustn’t make it, then!” said Pussy with fierce energy. “I’m not going to have my sister made miserable like that all her life, no fear I’m not. If nobody else will do anything about it, we’ve got to, Dom, that’s all.”

Dominic, a little puzzled and still shaken by the sudden and searing contact of other people’s misery, blinked at her for a moment without understanding. “Well, but I thought your sister—I didn’t know that she—everybody always said it was the other one. And she—well, she wasn’t being exactly nice to him, was she?”

“Oh, use your loaf!” said Pussy impatiently. “He wasn’t being exactly nice to her, but everybody knows he’s stuck on her so bad it’s half-killing him. What d’you think she was crying about? Of course he’s the one! I’ve thought so for a long time. They wouldn’t bother to fight if they weren’t gone on each other, because there’d be nothing to fight about. But, Dom, what on earth are we going to do?”