In the wall opposite was a window cobwebbed and dusty. By piling two of the boxes together he was able to reach it, and he calculated that he could just squeeze his body through the opening. He was afraid to break the glass, because of the noise the act would cause, and his fingers felt cautiously and timidly at the catch, which was almost welded to its position with the rust of many years. He began to pick at the rust with his nails and by small fractions of an inch he was able to move the catch. The tiny noises he made fretted at his nerves and the very need of caution made him careless. He stood on tiptoe, partly with the excitement and a restlessness to be gone, partly that he might get a better purchase on the terribly reluctant catch. With a long drawn out squeak it twisted and left the window free; at the same moment the noise of a door-handle turning swung him round. He had hardly noticed the door of the room, so certain had he been that it was locked, until now when it opened and the girl stood there. Andrews felt acutely ridiculous balanced upon his boxes. Carefully and slowly, with his eyes fixed on her, he stepped down.
She laughed, but without amusement. “What were you doing up there?” she asked. He felt furious with her at finding him in so ignominious a position.
“I was trying to escape,” he said.
“Escape?” she turned the word over on her lips as though it were a novel taste. “If you mean you wanted to go,” she said, “there was the door, wasn’t there?”
“Yes, and you with the gun,” he snapped back.
“Oh, that gun,” she laughed again, not scornfully this time but with a real merriment. “I haven’t an idea how to load it.”
He took a few steps towards her and looked less at her than at the open doorway behind her, which led, he saw, into the room of last night’s humiliation. He was certain that she was bluffing. She must have more than a coffin and a dead man in that room to give her the courage to face him so calmly—so impudently he styled it to himself. So he advanced a little way, widening his vision of that room beyond.
“You mean that I can go?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t stop you,” she said. A note of anger was struggling with amusement in her voice and at last amusement won. “I didn’t invite you for the night.”
“Don’t talk so much,” he said angrily and flushed a little when she asked if he were listening for something. For he was listening intently and thought for a moment that he heard the squeak of a board and then again a man’s breathing. But he could not be sure. Suppose she had gone out during the night and found Carlyon …
“Look here,” he cried, unable to bear the suspense longer, “what have you done?”
“Done?” she said. “Done?” He watched her suspiciously, hating that habit she had of turning words over like a pancake, first this side, then that.
“Who have you fetched while I’ve been sleeping? I know your sort.”
“You are a man, aren’t you?” she said with sudden vehemence and was met with a purely mechanical leer and response. “Do you want me to prove it?” It was as though the young man’s face were a mask to which small strings were attached. She had pulled one and the mouth had opened and the lips had twisted a little at one corner. She felt a brief wonder as to what string would work the eyes that remained watching her suspiciously, a little frightened, completely unresponsive to the lips. Andrews himself was not unaware of those strings that put his speech and mouth in servitude to others. Always a little too late he would try to recall his words, not through any shame in their purport—it would have been the same if they had been spoken in poetry, but because they had been dictated by another. So now that consciousness coming again a little too late made him try to cover up his previous words by others angrily spoken. “What do you mean anyway?”
“Do you think,” she said, “a man ever knows a woman’s sort? If I believed that,” she added, “I’d …” she looked at him with an amazed stare almost as though he had spoken the words. “You can go,” she added, “there’s no one to stop you. Why should I want you to stay?”
That’s all very well, he thought. Is it bluff? The girl has plenty of nerve. It seemed unlikely after the way he had broken in the night before that she should not have tried to communicate with someone. And the whole neighbourhood just at present was riddled with runners and revenue men. He was uncertain how he stood with them, and he had no trust, like Carlyon, in his own elusiveness. However, she said he could go and she stood there waiting. What a devil the woman was—forcing him to make a move. He no longer wanted to escape and stumble blindly into an unknown countryside. He wanted to lie down with his face to the wall and drowse. But she was waiting and waiting and he had to move. He moved slowly and softly towards the door, treading suspiciously like a cat in a strange house. When he reached the doorway he flung back the door as far as it would go lest anyone should be hiding behind it, ready to pounce on his turned back. Behind him he heard a laugh and swung round again. He felt tired and harassed and in no mood for mockery. A wave of
