Rachel stood where she was without moving and listened to it. She knew the clock quite well-a cheap shiny anachronism which lived on the scullery dresser and gained a steady five minutes a day. She turned her head and said in a strained voice,
“Gale-the clock-it’s ticking.”
He laughed behind her in the dark.
“That’s just a way they have.”
She drew in her breath sharply.
“Not when they haven’t been wound for a month. It’s an eight-day clock. Cosmo hasn’t been down here since the end of September. He said so yesterday-he said he hadn’t been down. But the clock’s ticking.”
“Well, honey, anyone could get in with that key. Let’s get those matches.”
He moved to pass her, but she caught his arm.
“Wait! Gale, please wait. I don’t like it. I won’t go on without a light. Have you got matches in the car?”
“Not a match. But there’s another torch-a small one I keep for a spare. Do you want me to get it? It’s a long way back to that field.”
Rachel hesitated. To go stumbling and groping back to the car, with matches a couple of yards away on the dresser? Not reasonable. She said “No-” in a hesitating tone and took a half step forward. And then, in a rush of terror, reason was suspended.
With that suspense what asserted itself was the oldest fear in the world-the trap, the snare, the abyss, the pit, the terror that lurks unknown in the dark. She went back, and as Gale Brandon moved to pass her, she caught him and held him.
“I won’t go on without a light. There’s something-”
She heard him laugh.
“What’s wrong with this place is the damp. It smells like the inside of a well.”
And with that Rachel knew. She said,
“Will you stop here-quite still? Will you promise me not to move-at all?”
“What’s this?”
“Will you promise, Gate-will you promise?”
“If you want me to.”
She let go of his arm and began to feel her way round the edge of the room. First to the corner by the sink, and then to the larder door. Then to the dresser, feeling, always feeling, with her left hand on the wall and her right hand at arm’s length to grope in the empty dark.
She came to the dresser, felt her way along it until her fingers touched the matches, and struck one. The tiny spirt of light dazzled and sputtered out, but it had shown her an old brass candlestick, the candle half burned down. With her back to the door she struck another match, and this time reached the candle wick. There was a moment whilst the flame took hold, and another when it flagged and failed. Then the wax melted and fed it, and the flame rose bright and clear. She turned with the candle in her hand and held it up. A yard from her feet on the one side, a yard from Gale’s feet on the other, was the open mouth of the well, three feet across. If she had taken the second step where she had taken the first, it would have taken her over the edge. The well was two hundred feet deep. There was twenty feet of water in it all the three years when half the wells in the country failed and dried out. There it was, as black as death, between her and Gale-the old well of the Well Corner, dug four, five, six hundred years ago for the refreshment of man and beast. Her thought stood still, and could not move from the well.
Her hand held up the candle, stiff and steady, as if the wax, the brass and her arm were all of one piece. She stared at Gale, and for a moment he stood rigid, staring back at her. Then he came round the well, walking slowly and carefully, and took the candle from her hand and set it down on the dresser and put his arms about her.
They stood like that, locked together, without speaking a word, hardly drawing breath, because death had been so close and life was immeasurably sweet.
Presently, when he lifted her face and kissed her, she could feel that his was wet, and that moved her very much. Her own eyes were dry. The danger had been hers, not his. Her heart contracted as she thought of what he might have heard in the dark if she had taken that other step. She would have cried out, but the sound would have been swallowed up by the well… And then there would have been the splash-a long way down-a horribly long way down.
She found words then to comfort him, as one finds words to comfort a child who has waked afraid-stumbling words, broken words, that brought tears to her eyes and a great gush of love to her heart. As he held her and kissed the tears away, they came so near that it was as if they took each other then with a true marriage vow-to love and to cherish-till death us do part-and thereto I give thee my troth.
They drew apart slowly and reluctantly. The candlelight showed the room with the door open upon the back door step, a tin can standing in the sink, a deal table pushed against the left-hand wall, and, tilted against it, damp from the breath of the water, the wooden cover which had been taken away from the well.
Gale let go of her and walked over to it. He touched it and looked back over his shoulder.
~“Do they keep the well open like this?”
Rachel said, “Never.”
In her mind words formed themselves-part of a verse which she knew quite well, but now she could only remember how it began: “They have digged a pit…” The words said themselves over and over. “They have digged a pit-they have digged a pit-they have digged a pit-” But she couldn’t remember how the verse should end.
Gale came back to her.
“Rachel-what does this mean?”
She said, “I don’t know.” But it wasn’t true, because the answer was in those words which repeated themselves without ceasing in her mind: “They have digged a pit…”
Chapter Thirty-six
They stood there, very close but not touching one another. The candle behind them on the dresser threw their shadows forward across the well, and the uneven brick, and the damp stone of the doorstep beyond it. The two long shadows lay there and were still.
At last Gale said, “What’s in your mind? You’d better tell me.”
She turned towards him then and spoke in an odd clear voice,
“Someone wound the clock, and someone uncovered the well-” She turned a little more and pointed. “The clock says half past four. It gains five minutes a day. What is the right time?”
They looked together at the watch on his wrist. The hands stood at five-and-twenty past.
“Then it was wound yesterday,” he said.
Rachel said, “Yes.”
“And the person who wound it uncovered the well. Why?”
She had no answer to that.
“But the clock,” said Gale Brandon-“that’s what I can’t understand. If that cover was taken off the well for the only reason that I can think of, why in thunder should the person who did it wind the clock?”
Rachel was cold to her feet. There was just one person who could never keep his hands from a clock. If Cosmo had come here yesterday he could no more have helped picking up that clock and winding it than he could have helped breathing. Because the clock would have stopped- it would have been stopped for nearly six weeks. Cosmo could never pass a clock that had stopped without winding it. But Cosmo had not been here since the end of September. He had said so yesterday.
Someone had been here.
Someone had wound the clock.
The person who had wound the clock had uncovered the well.
They had digged a pit-
She turned slowly and looked at Gale. His eyes were horrified and stern. A most dreadful thought came to her. Her lips were suddenly dry as she said,
“Caroline!” She could not get past the name. Her eyes said the rest, and said it with anguish. “Did she come here before us? Are we too late?”
He said, “No-no-the door was locked. The key was in the shed.”
Rachel’s hand went to her throat,