Charlotte came to a standstill within a foot or so of her friend. She put both hands to her face to protect it from the intense heat, and in her ears an angry roar like the howling of a gale in an old-fashioned chimney, and a continuous crackling that was even more horrifying than the hollow roar.
“Is it – is it the car that passed us?” she barely whispered to Hannah.
The latter nodded.
“It must be. As far as I can make it out it hit a projection of your wall, but it didn’t go over into the sea although it must have turned somersault several times.” She was tinning her glance in all directions, seeking with a very faint hope in her heart for some evidence that the driver – Richard Tremarth – had been thrown clear, and was in need of some attention from her and reasonably close at hand. But every time her fascinated gaze was drawn back to the glowing wreck of the car the hope died, and she knew that what she was feeling was a forlorn hope, and that no one could live who had been involved in such a catastrophe.
Charlotte said as much as she stood there with her hands pressed against her face, her gaze equally fascinated.
“Why, oh, why was he travelling at such a speed?” she demanded of the bleak unfriendly night.
But Hannah didn’t answer.
“We must make absolutely certain,” she said, a minute later. “I’ll grope my way along this end of the verge, and you retrace your steps. If he was anywhere on the road we’d have stumbled over him before this.”
Charlotte turned mechanically to return by the way she had come, and then out of the strange and ghostly night a voice spoke to her
– a little plaintively, but quite strongly:
“You don’t have to search! I’m here! Luckily, for once, I didn’t fasten my seat belt… I was thrown clear! I’ve just climbed up several feet from somewhere down the re… He indicated the rocks below them, and then folded up on the grass and lay almost touching Charlotte’s feet. “Sorry!” he apologised, before he became unconscious.
Hannah took charge in a way that proved her to be a considerable loss to the nursing profession. First she ascertained that the victim was breathing, and had not passed out altogether, and then she ordered Charlotte to stay with him while she returned for their car and drove it back along the road to the spot where Tremarth was stretched out silently on the soaking wet grass of the cliff top.
“But wouldn’t it be better if we left him undisturbed until we can get an ambulance?” she protested, with memories of the one or two lessons she had received in first-aid rushing up over her.
Hannah answered immediately: “If we do he’ll die of pneumonia. So far as I can judge he’s not badly hurt, but he is concussed. If we can get him into the car he’ll be all right, provided we’ve enough strength to get him into Tremarth!”
“Thankfully we’re on the telephone,” Charlotte breathed with relief. “The Emergency Service will get you a doctor.”
Hannah did not wait to discuss the matter, but darted back along the road to the spot where they had parked the car. By some strange irony of fate the mist had started to clear, and by the time she reached the car a patch of starlit sky was visible above her head, and wan fingers of moonlight straggled across the cliff top. Hannah decided to risk going over the cliff herself and backed the car, and Charlotte saw the tail light moving towards her with more relief in her heart than she was sure she had ever experienced before.
She had made one or two attempts to penetrate Richard’s unconsciousness and establish beyond doubt that he was not badly injured, but following upon that single “Sorry!”, and his collapse at her feet, he had made neither movement nor sound.
The moonlight showed her his unconscious face, and she lifted it and his sleek dark head gingerly on to her lap. Moisture was sparkling on his hair, and she found that she had a handkerchief tightly clenched in her hand and dabbed at it with a comer of the cambric that was impregnated with the perfume she had used before going out that night.
Fresh horror seized her as she recollected the kind of evening they had enjoyed while Richard was approaching his doom… and despite Hannah’s optimism she found the fact that not so much as one of his eyelids quivered horribly alarming. She had been talking of him as if he was a kind of public nuisance, and now here he was at her feet, his cheeks slightly hollow, his thick eyelashes very dark, his mouth very shapely and curved a little upwards at the corners as if in his state of unconsciousness he was not entirely unhappy.
Charlotte bent nearer to him, and tried to trace the likeness between him as he now was and the boy who had so obligingly obeyed all her behests when she was so very young, and in the attractiveness of his mouth and the square chin below it she thought she succeeded. Richard had always had a polite and rather bright smile for her great-aunt, who had described him as a handsome boy, despite the fact that she had had little or no time for him, and Charlotte thought him an almost startlingly handsome man as he lay with his head in her lap… and this surprised her afterwards, for when people are unconscious they do not normally appear at their best, and yet Richard Tremarth, who was now in his early thirties, actually caused a strange little wrench in the region of her heart as she gazed at him in the cold, unfeeling moonlight and recognised a most peculiar and insidious masculine appeal.
The fact that he was a hard man – and had wanted to turn her out of her house – was forgotten. When Hannah came running swiftly over the grass and made to lift his head from her lap she protested sharply:
“Are you absolutely certain it’s safe to move him?”
“Of course! Unless you’d rather we left him here to contract pneumonia…?”
They had great difficulty in getting him into the car. Episodes from various films and television plays that she had witnessed returned to Charlotte as they half dragged and half carried him towards the stationary vehicle, and when the most difficult moment arrived and they had to get him on to the back seat he partially recovered consciousness and more or less helped himself. But he relapsed into complete unconsciousness again once they had draped him as comfortably as they could against the back seat.
Charlotte felt as if her nerve had all but completely gone, and she was only too happy for Hannah to take over the driving and get them back to Tremarth in as short a time as possible. She sat in the seat beside the driving seat and watched nervously in case Richard rolled off the back.
Within a matter of minutes lights were streaming from Tremarth and
Hannah was telephoning for a doctor. The latter came in a remarkably short space of time and helped them get Richard inside the house, and on a couch in the drawing-room he finally recovered consciousness and appeared amazed to find them all grouped attentively round him. In particular he appeared to find it astonishing that Charlotte, in her lemon-yellow silk, should be actually down on her knees within a few inches of his face; and when he made the discovery that he was in the drawing-room at Tremarth an oddly gratified smile crossed his face.
“Strange, he murmured, “very strange.” Then he grimaced at the doctor who was ordering him to he still and not attempt any talking.
“Don’t be silly, doctor,” he protested weakly. “I gather you are a doctor…?”
The competent young man who apparently nowadays resided in the village of Tremarth and had taken over old Dr. Tremarth’s practice smiled at him in a cheerful manner.
“For your sake I hope I’m completely qualified,” he answered. “You’ve got a lump on your head that is going to be very painful in the next few days, and I’m afraid your left arm is broken. You’re going to have to let me set it! ” Tremarth winced.
“Any other broken bones?” he asked.
“None that I’ve discovered as a result of a preliminary examination. But on the whole, I’d say you’ve come off rather lightly ”
Tremarth winced again. The light seemed to be hurting his eyes, and Charlotte switched off the big central light and put on a tall standard lamp instead.
“What – happened?” Tremarth wanted to know, blinking bewilderedly up at the ceiling.
“You came to grief in your car. I’m afraid it’s a complete write-off.”
The eyes of the man on the couch turned almost appealingly to Charlotte. “Car?” he queried. And then a glimmering of intelligence showed between the thick black eyelashes. “Oh, of course, I – I’d stayed out rather late, and I was hoping to get back in time for dinner… ”
“According to these young ladies you were travelling at about sixty miles an hour.” Richard’s white teeth gleamed.
“That must be an exaggeration,” he said huskily. “It was on the cliff top, and I’d hardly be breaking records in a
