‘What did happen?’
‘Well, it was practically pitch-dark, and there were wallops of fog lying about loose all over the place, and whenever I came to one I had to get off and walk, so I wasn’t getting on very fast. And every time I had to get off I got a most horrid nightmare kind of feeling that something was coming after me, and that it was going to catch me up.’
There was a pause.
Henry said, ‘Nonsense!’ in a rough, reassuring way, and Hilary said in rather a wavering voice,
‘Henry -would you mind -if I held your hand – because – ’
Henry pulled her across the carriage on to his knees, put both arms round her, and rocked her as if she was a baby.
‘First -class – prize – silly – little – fool!’
‘Um – ’ said Hilary, a good deal comforted.
‘Now you can go on,’ said Henry.
She went on with her head against his shoulder.
‘Wasn’t nice. Was horrid. Like being lost dog in a bad dream. And just when it got to its worst a car came blinding out of the fog and I jumped for the side of the road. Henry, I only just jumped in time. They weren’t coming so fast at first, and I thought I’d try and follow them into Ledlington, and then I think they saw me, and they tried to run me down.’
‘Nonsense!’ said Henry with his arms round her.
‘No,’ said Hilary, in a soft, sighing voice.
‘They couldn’t!’
‘They did. And I jumped, and hit my head, and I must have passed out, because the next thing I knew they were carrying me. And one of them said I was only stunned. And then he said, “Quick now, and we’ll make a job of it!” And then, Henry – then – they put me down in the road and got back into the car and got ready to drive it over me.’
Henry stopped rocking. His arms tightened about her. Behind the jab she had just given to his nerves his mind said, ‘You know this can’t possibly be true. She got run down in the fog and hit her head. The rest of it isn’t anything at all – she dreamt it.’
She turned her head on his shoulder. By craning backwards she could see his profile with the ceiling light behind it. It was one of those strong, silent profiles. She gave a little gentle sigh and said,
‘You’re not believing me.’
It was really very difficult for Henry. The last thing on earth he wanted was to start another quarrel, but he had by nature the gift which Thomas the Rhymer so indignantly refused at the hands of the Queen of Elfland – the tongue that can never lie.
‘ “My tongue is mine ain,” True Thomas said,
A gudely gift ye wad gie to me!
I neither dout to buy nor sell,
At fair or tryst where I may be.
‘ “I dout neither speak to prince or peer,
Nor ask of grace from fair ladye.” ’
In fact, a most uncomfortable and embarrassing gift. It wasn’t Henry’s fault – he hadn’t asked for it. He often found it extremely inconvenient, especially in his dealings with women. In reply to Hilary’s sigh and ‘You’re not believing me,’ he could do no better with his tongue than to make it keep silence.
Hilary sighed again. Then she put her head back on his shoulder.
‘That means you’re not. I don’t know why you want to marry me if you don’t believe a word I say.’
Henry kissed her, which was quite easy and committed him to nothing. When she could speak again she said, ‘I shouldn’t kiss someone I thought was a liar, but I suppose men are different. I’m too tired to quarrel about it.’
‘I don’t think you’re a liar.’
‘Well, what do you think?’
‘I think you had concussion. You say you knocked your head. I think the rest of it was a sort of dream. You have them when you’re concussed.’
‘I don’t! Henry, you’ve got a very stubborn disposition. I think I’m behaving exactly like Patient Griselda not to quarrel. I’m admiring myself a lot for it, so I hope you are too. I suppose it’s no good going on telling you what happened – if you’re not going to believe it, I mean.’
Henry shook her a little. He also said, ‘Go on.’
She went on in a small meek voice with her lips quite close to his ear.
‘Of course if you say it was only a dream, it must have been one – Henry the Never Wrong and all that sort of thing. Well, in this perfectly horrid dream they did put me down in the road and got ready to run me over. I was all muzzy, and I’d have let them do it, only when they banged the door of the car something went click like when you put the electric light on, and I got my head up and saw the car coming for me, and I did a sort of slither and got off on to the grass and through the scratchiest hedge in England. And after that there was a sort of hollow with bushes, and I hid there. And when they couldn’t find me they got into the car again and went away. And I was afraid to go back on to the road because of not knowing it was a dream and being afraid of them waiting there to grab me, so I walked brightly up a lot of ruts till I came to a gate. And then I walked round a cottage till I came to a scullery window, and there was Mrs. Mercer making tea.’
Henry held her away so that he could look at her.
‘Hilary – are you making this up?’
He got a mournful shake of the head.
‘I’m not nearly clever enough. And, oh, Henry, it was the most crashing disappointment, because first she was angry and then she began to say things like she did in the train.’
‘What sort of things?’
‘Well, she said, “Go! Go, while you can!” and that she didn’t dare let me in. She said he’d cut her heart out – and of course she meant Mercer. And the way she looked when she said it made me feel perfectly sick. I shouldn’t feel frightfully safe myself in a lonely cottage with Mercer if he thought I was giving the show away, and that’s what she was on the edge of doing. You know she told me in the train that she tried to see Marion when the trial was going on. Well, I pressed her about that, and she looked as if she was going to flop, and said, “It’s too late.” I grabbed hold of her wrist -we were talking across the scullery sink – and she began to cry, and said she couldn’t say her prayers, and why hadn’t she told Marion, only if she had Mercer would have killed her, and then she’d have gone to hell. So I swore I wouldn’t go until she told me, and I asked her if she wanted Mercer to find me there when he got back. And then she went all flesh-creeping and said he’d kill me -with the bread-knife – and say she’d done it, and then they’d take her away and lock her up, because he’d make them believe she was mad.’
‘She must be mad. What’s the good of believing what a mad woman says?’
Hilary gave a faint, shaky laugh.
‘Is she mad in my dream, or mad really? I’m only telling you a dream, you know – at least you said it was only a dream. And the way I dreamt it she wasn’t mad, she was just horribly frightened – and if it’s my own dream, I ought to know, oughtn’t I? Any how, I asked her bang out.’
‘You asked her what?
‘I asked her if she was mad – just like that. I said, “Are you mad, Mrs. Mercer?” And she said, “Not without he sends me mad with his wickedness.” And then she cried buckets, and wished she was dead. And just when she’d got to the point when I thought she was going to tell me what she’d got on her mind, she shut right up like a clam and pulled her hand away from me and ran into the kitchen and banged the door. And I don’t know how many miles I walked into Ledlington after that, but when I saw the first lamp-post I felt as if I could have kissed its boots.’
Henry said nothing. He was wondering how much of Hilary’s story was concussion, and how much was true. The way he straightened it out in his own mind she had taken a toss off her bicycle and had wandered away across the fields. If she had really seen Mrs. Mercer, the woman had said some very odd things. But had she seen her, or had she dreamed the whole thing? He had begun by being sure that she had, but his conviction had begun to weaken. Hilary did not appear to be at all concussed. She didn’t look muzzy, or excited or dazed, she just looked tired. And the very fact that she didn’t flare up and go into a rage in defence of her story did more to shake him than anything else could have done. Hilary went into rages rather easily, but when it came to this story of hers she had just stuck to it with a rather convincing calm.