Patricia Wentworth - Danger Point

Dale went on listening. When she was quiet he crossed to a chest between the windows and opened the top right-hand drawer. Lisle had so many bags. She had been wearing a grey flannel coat and skirt when she went down to the Cranes. That meant a grey bag.

He took out the whole drawer, carried it through into his room, and put on the light there. The grey bag was pushed down in a corner. He opened it and sorted through the contents – handkerchief; lipstick; rouge and powder compact; keys. In an inner compartment a snapshot of himself – and a card. He picked it out and turned it to catch the light. The name on the card was completely strange to him, but he looked at it for a long time.

Miss Maud Silver

15 Montague Mansions,

West Leaham Street, S. W.

Private Investigations Undertaken.

When the time had run out he put the card back into the bag, and the bag into the drawer.

The room was very quiet when he came into it again. He slid the drawer into its place and stood for a moment listening to the stillness, then moved nearer to the bed. She stirred, caught her breath between a sob and a groan, and woke. There was a moment of terror, because the room was dark and someone was there – not speaking, not moving. And then, as he said her name, terror rushed out and joy rushed in.

She said in a warm voice, “Oh, darling, you frightened me,” and he came and knelt down beside her and put his arms round her.

“ You frightened me . You were calling out in your sleep. What was it – a dream?”

“Oh, yes – a horrible dream. But it doesn’t matter now.”

Nothing mattered if Dale was there – if Dale was kind. There were no more dreams, and when she woke up the sun was on the windows and Dale was pouring out tea. Whatever cloud there had been between them, it had gone as completely as if it had never been. He was going over to the aerodrome after breakfast – he was crazy about flying just now. They talked about that, and about flying, and about what a bit of luck it had been getting his own price for the flying-ground. That is to say, he did most of the talking, and Lisle was happy because Dale was pleased.

“I wonder what my father would have said if anyone had told him all that moorland would fetch a fancy price. But there’ll be a subsidy worth having on wheat if there’s a war – and it’s bound to come. In my great-grandfather’s time you could stand up there where the aerodrome is and see nothing but wheat, so long as you stood with your back to the sea. Funny if it all came back again. There were big fortunes made then. But that won’t happen again, worse luck. They’ll skin our profits down somehow, damn them.”

He was sitting on the edge of the bed, his hair rumpled and his eyes smiling. Blue and white striped pyjamas set off the clear brown skin. The open collar showed the strong neck. She felt the old hero-worship for him spring up in her. It was something very primitive, and she was rather ashamed of it. Dale… Other women found him good to look at, ran after him. Some of them didn’t mind how plainly they showed their feelings. But he wasn’t for them – he was hers! She wasn’t proud of feeling like that, but she didn’t seem able to help it.

He laughed and said, “What are you thinking about?” and when she said, “You,” he kissed her and with his arm half round her went on,

“Keep right on doing it, darling, because I want to talk to you.”

She said, “What about?” and her heart went cold in her when he said,

“Tanfield.”

Dale sat back a little so that he could look at her. His hand slid down from her shoulder and rested against her knee.

“You see, I’ve got to give Tatham an answer.”

“Yes-” She could manage no more than that.

It seemed to her that all their lives hung on the answer which Dale would presently have to make. If he would take Mr. Tatham’s offer, sell Tanfield, and move those two miles inland to the Manor House, they would be free to live and be happy. But if there was something in him that wouldn’t let him sell, then they must stay here, and Tanfield would suck them dry until they were old, grey, dead people dragging an intolerable burden up an unending hill. Her hands came together and held each other tightly, as if they would hold on to something Dale was trying to take away, not from her – not just from her – but from both of them.

Her eyes went to his face and stayed there, dark with apprehension, because whenever they talked about Tanfield something strained between them and was wrenched almost to breaking-point. But today, though he looked serious, he did not frown. He leaned on his hand and said,

“It’s a good price. Most people would say I was a fool if I refused it. But you’re not most people, Lisle – you’re my wife. If I have a son to come after me here, you’ll be his mother. That’s what I want to talk to you about.” His voice changed suddenly and broke. “It’s so difficult to make you understand. And I’ve got a beast of a temper. I get angry, and then I say things, and you get hurt and frightened and we don’t get any farther. But I thought – we might – talk about it – differently. I thought you might – try to understand my point of view.”

He saw the colour go out of her face. It drained away and left the fair skin white. She said in an almost soundless whisper,

“I’ll try.”

He sat up, looking away from her.

“You don’t like Tanfield – you’ve made that quite plain. No, no, that’s all wrong – that’s not how I meant to begin. It’s so damned hard to make you see, and when I try to get hold of words that will show you how I feel, they’re the wrong ones.” He turned back to her again. “Lisle, help me by trying to understand.”

She said, “Yes – yes -”

“Then it’s this way. When you’ve had a place as long as we’ve had Tanfield, it doesn’t belong to you. It’s like your country – you belong to it – it comes first. Look at all the pictures in the long gallery. Those people have all lived here, had their time here. Most of them have added something in their time. And they’re gone – the whole lot of them. But Tanfield is here, and Tanfield is going to be here when we’re gone, and if we have sons, Tanfield will go on being here after their time too. Don’t you see what I mean? It doesn’t matter about us, and it doesn’t matter about our children. We shall go, and they’ll go, but Tanfield will go on.”

His eye had kindled and the colour had come to his cheek.

Lisle gazed at him with a sort of paralysed horror. He had said, “Try to understand,” and she had said, “I’ll try.” But she didn’t have to try. It was easy enough to understand, and the more she understood of it, the more it horrified her. People, human lives, herself and Dale, their children – all of no account in comparison with a great soulless barrack of a house, made uglier and more expensive by the successive sacrifices of each generation. It was a point of view, and she could understand it well enough, but it seemed to her quite mad, quite horrible.

Dale got up, walked to the window, and came back again. He hadn’t moved her – he could see that he hadn’t moved her. No colour, no response – her eyes watching him.

She said only just above her breath,

“There isn’t anything I can do.”

He flung himself down beside her.

“Not while you feel like that. Oh, Lisle darling, can’t you see? It’s no good going to Mr. Robson unless you feel different. I know you’ve asked him to let you put some of your capital into keeping Tanfield, and if you ask him a hundred times, he’ll still say no, because he can see that you don’t really mean it. If you felt differently, he’d let you do it. It’s because he knows you hate Tanfield that he won’t help you to save it.”