appearing there in full view, and having an irate father descend on him on the spot with a demand that he should explain himself, and wreck everything he had gone to such pains to build up. Even reasonable fathers were queer about allowing you freedom of action in matters which infringed their authority and involved your own danger; and of the reality of the danger he had brought down upon himself Dominic was in no doubt whatever. That was the whole point. If he was not in any danger, then he was hopelessly off the track, and all his ingenuity would have proved nothing, and left Kitty as forsaken and encircled as ever. Moreover, this danger was something he must not ward off. He would have to watch it closing in, and sit still like a hypnotised rabbit to let it tighten on him. If he fought his own way out he might fail of proving what he had set out to prove. He mustn’t struggle, he must leave it to others to extricate him and hope they would be in time. He was voluntary bait now, nothing more.
“You are in a state tonight,” said Miss Cleghorn, shaking him by a fistful of chestnut hair. “You don’t even hear when I offer you biscuits. Why I bother, when all you deserve is bed without supper, I can’t imagine. What’s the matter with you? Things being tough at school, or what?”
School! That was all they thought about. If you were sixteen, whatever worries you had must be about school.
“No, I’m all right, honestly. Just one of those days, can’t concentrate on anything. I’ll catch up by next time.”
“You’d better! Here you are, get this down you, it’s freezing outside, you need something to keep you warm, waiting for that old bus. I always say that’s the bleakest spot in town, that bus station.”
He made his cocoa last until the dot of nine. Better give her an extra minute or two, in case she got held up at the club.
“I’ll tell Mummy you said I was making steady progress,” he said impudently as he pulled on his coat. “That all right?”
“You can tell her I said you should be spanked, she might oblige. Now watch how you go, I can see the frost sparkling on the road already. Only just October and hard frost, I ask you!”
“Good night!” he said, already at the front gate.
“Good night, Dominic!” She closed the door on him slowly, almost reluctantly. Now what can be the matter with that child, she wondered vexedly, he’s certainly got something on his mind. Ought I to speak to his mother, I wonder? But he’s at a funny age, probably it’s something he doesn’t want her to know about, and he’d never forgive me if I interfered. No, better let well alone. She switched on the television and put her feet up, and in a little while Dominic Felse passed out of her mind.
He walked to the end of the street with a slowing step, trying not to notice that it was slowing, not to let it slow. Normality, be with me! I’ve got a load off my mind, not on it. I’ve got to do it right, otherwise I’d have done better not to do it at all. Come on, you’re in it now, give it everything you’ve got. Remember Kitty! He thought of her, and the tension within him was eased as by a sudden warmth relaxing every nerve. What, after all, does danger matter? You’re making Kitty safe. What happens now can’t hurt her, it can only deliver her. He took heart; he was going to be all right. Even when it came, he was going to accept it and not chicken out.
There was always, of course, the thought that she might not come to the rendezvous, that in all honesty she might have thought better of it. There was the possibility that she might come, but acting in all good faith, in which case she would simply take what he gave her, and reassure him and drive him safely home; and the thousand deaths he died on the way would be no more than he deserved, and the abject amends he owed her would be something he could never hope to pay. There were so many pitfalls, so many ways of being wrong; and yet all the time he knew in his heart that he was not wrong.
And she was there. When he drew near to the corner of the silent, frosty road, under the tinkling darkness and sparkle of the trees, he saw the long, sleek shape of the old Riley sitting back relaxed and elegant alongside the knife-edged glitter of the kerb. She opened the near-side door for him, smiling. Never before had he noticed how silent, how deserted this quarter of the town could be at night. There was not another person in sight, and only one lone car passed along the middle of the broad road as he approached. When it had gone everything was so still that his light footsteps sounded loudly in the quietness, reverberating between the frostlight and the starlight with a terrible, solitary singleness.
“Hallo, Dominic,” said Miss Hamilton, scooping up an armful of things from the front passenger seat and dumping them at random into the rear seat, scarf and handbag and a bunch of duplicated papers that looked like club notices, and a large electric torch that rolled to the far hollow of the hide upholstery.
“Hallo, Miss Hamilton! This is most awfully kind of you. You’re sure I’m not being a nuisance? I could easily get the bus home.”
“Don’t be silly,” she said placidly. “Get in. It will only take me a quarter of an hour or so, I shall soon be home. And it’s much too cold to hang about waiting for buses.” She leaned across him and snapped home the catch on the handle of the door. “It’s getting rather worn, I shall have to have a new handle fixed. I have to lock it or it might come open, especially on a bend. And as I’m apt to be carrying rather lively passengers sometimes it could be dangerous,” she concluded with a smile.
“None aboard tonight,” he said, glancing at the back seat.
“I’ve just dropped two of them. The club’s still in session, but I don’t have time to stay all the evening.” She settled back in the driving-seat, and looked at him with the indulgent smile that took into account both his youth and its extreme sensitivity, his helpless tears of the afternoon and his desire that she should forget them.
“Well, did you bring them?” she asked gently. “Or have you thought better of it and turned them over to your father? Don’t worry, I shan’t blame you if you have, I shall quite understand. It was entirely up to you.”
“I’ve brought them,” he said.
“Then the best thing you can do is hand them over right now, and I’ll take them and put them away, and you can forget the whole thing. I’ll never remind you of it again, and no one else can. You’ve not told anyone else?”
“No, not a word.”
“Good, then don’t. From tonight on you’re to stop worrying, you understand? Kitty’ll come out of it all right if she didn’t do it, and we two are agreed that she didn’t. That’s right, isn’t it?”
“Yes, of course.” He withdrew from his music-case a small, soft bundle rolled rather untidily in tissue-paper, so loosely that a corner of Polythene protruded, and in the reflected light from the sodium street lights there was just a glimpse of crumpled black kid through the plastic, soiled and discoloured. He put it into Miss Hamilton’s hand, his large eyes fixed trustingly upon her face, and heaved a great sigh as it passed, as though a load had been lifted from him.
