The Girl in the Cellar

CHAPTER 19

Anne went on through the door into the hall. The light seemed frighteningly bright to her eyes which had accustomed themselves to the darkness. She had come out into the back part of the hall. What light there was came from the single jet turned low just inside the hall door. The first door on her right led into the dining-room, and beyond it, to the front of the house, was the room where they had sat after dinner. It was the room where Lilian had her writing-table. Light shone under the door. Straining, she thought she could catch the sound of voices. She stood still and listened. The murmur of voices went on.

And then she had a sudden fright. One of the voices rose, came nearer. She darted for the dining-room door. It was level with her. She was inside and the door held close in front of her-not shut but just held close. She stood there, her heart beating so loud that it seemed to her that anyone would be able to hear it and follow the sound and find her.

Moments passed. Her heart-beats quieted. And then when she could hear again there was sound coming, not through the door whose handle she clutched, but from behind her. She turned round. The door against which she had been leaning, the door into the hall, wasn’t shut. But the sound didn’t come from there. It came from in front of her on the right-hand side. It came from the next-door room, and she remembered that there was a door between the two rooms.

When the house was built all those years ago, when old Mr Fancourt was young, there had been gay parties in the house and provision made for guests to circulate. Lilian’s voice, explaining that of course they lived very differently now since the two wars, came to her.

‘Of course, we don’t remember its gay days. He wasn’t so young when he married our mother.’ Lilian’s high, affected voice came trailing out of her memory as she crossed the dark dining-room step by cautious step. She mustn’t make any noise at all or they would hear her as she could hear them.

She was about half-way across the room, her hands feeling before her and the carpet soft under her feet, when it came to her with paralysing suddenness that one of the people she could hear speaking next door was a man. It came to her with terrifying suddenness. From that moment when her own heart had quieted and she had really begun to listen, it had been Lilian’s voice to which she had been listening. And then suddenly there was a man speaking. It was strange to her, and yet not strange at all. It wasn’t Jim’s voice. Quite definitely it wasn’t his.

She went on moving slowly and carefully until she came to the door between the two rooms. Her hands groping in front of her felt the panels of the door. They came flat against it and stayed there. Her forehead came down between them and was pressed against the dark panel. She heard the man say, ‘You’d much better leave it all to me,’ and in that moment she knew that the man who was speaking was the man who had watched her in the garden. She had been on her knees planting the bulbs, and she had looked up and seen him. It swept out of her memory and caught her back. It took her a moment to shake it off and to come again to the dark room with her hands pressed against the door and her forehead leaning against it. It took her a moment to be where she was, not where she had been.

She came back and listened to the voices on the other side of the dark door. She must have missed something, because what she heard was Lilian again-not what she said, but her voice leaving off as if she had been speaking and then had stopped. And quite clear on that again, the man’s voice, a little louder.

‘Dry up, will you! The less you know about this the better! You do what you’re told and that’s all you’ve got to bother about!’

‘I don’t think-’

‘You don’t need to think! You do just what you’re told and no harm will come to you! You start thinking, and before you know where you are you’ll be in difficulties! And if you get into difficulties, you can get out of them all on your own as far as I’m concerned!’

Then Lilian again.

‘Oh, no, I didn’t mean that. I wish you wouldn’t-you confuse me so-I only meant-’

He said, ‘Dry up! You’d better! When I want you to think or plan anything I’ll let you know! Which room is she in?’

‘Upstairs. But I don’t think-’

‘Dry up! I’ll take her now-no time like the present. She’s been here long enough-too long. If I’d thought for a moment… Now, look here-’

Anne seemed to come to herself. She had this minute-only this minute. It didn’t matter what they said, or what they were going to say, she had just this minute in which to save herself. Her hands, which were flat on the door, pushed her back from it. It was as if they had a life and energy of their own. They pushed her, and she was upright. And then the same curious force seemed to turn her and she retraced her steps. There was just one moment when she stopped. She was half-way to the door, and the man laughed. Everything in her went cold at the sound. She stopped and stood with her bare feet on the thick, warm carpet and felt the deadly cold pass over her. She did not know that the laugh might have driven her into headlong flight. If it had done that, nothing could have saved her. It was the age-old instinct to be still, not to move, that had saved her. She stood and waited. When her pulses had died down she moved on towards the door.

It was terrible to leave the dark room for the lighted hall. It was harder now than it had been. The thought went through her mind that if it was so hard as not to be possible she was lost. The fear of that struck into her and took her across the strip of lighted hall between the doorway of the dining-room and the door which led to the safe back stair.

When she was in the dark again, the terror that was upon her slackened a little. She came out upon the cross passage which ran through the house and made her way along it to the landing, and so back again to her room.

The room felt safe, but it wasn’t. Nothing under this roof was safe. Nothing at all. She began to dress herself. The clothes she put on struck cold against her. She felt in the cupboard and found her coat and skirt and the shirt which went with it. She must be quick-oh, she must be quick. And she didn’t dare to make a light, she didn’t dare. She put on her shoes and stockings, and the shirt, and the coat and skirt, the hat, and the top coat, and she was at the door.

The passage was dark and empty. Just one more effort and she would be free. A tune and the fragment of a song came into her mind as she stood there looking out at the dark passage brightening towards the landing, darkening again on the other side.

One more river and that’s the river of Jordan,

One more river, one more river to cross.

Suddenly she felt quick, and clear, and calm. She was going to get away, and nobody was going to stop her.

She went quietly along the brightening way, across the landing, and made her way along the passage to the stair down which she had gone before.