I jumped out of bed and opened my door. The landing was quiet, no sound reached my ears. I crept along to her room and listened outside the door. Should I knock and make sure that she was safe? And if the others heard me and were roused, cut away any ultimate chance I might have of being of service to her? As I hesitated, I saw another picture of the doctor, the doctor this time, not the man. Could that be hypocrisy too? God! what a vacillating doddering fool I was—doddering—doddering grass fluttering here and there in the fickle wind of my own imagination’s making. I went miserably back to my room and tried to compose myself for such sleep as my whirling thoughts might allow me. I endeavored to think of ordinary homely things—of my every-day work—of Brenda, but Brenda’s brown eyes turned to gray, those clear gray eyes of Janet’s that had held me with their look and set my heart a-flutter.
No doubt both my brain and nervous system were over-strained, for hardly once in a twelvemonth is my sleep disturbed by dreams, but again, as on the two previous nights, my subconscious mental activities were pronounced enough to be registered among my waking thoughts. This time I was down on the Romney flats that lie between Rye and the sea. I had once spent a holiday there. I was on a bicycle, an antiquated, heavy piece of ironmongery, pushing wearily along a winding road, making every yard with effort though neither wind nor hill barred progress. I was both urgent and belated. Rye must be reached before dark, and already swirling wreaths of mist like slim transparent shrouds were rising from the marshes to meet the falling dusk. But Rye must be reached before dark and my pedals clanked, Rye must be reached before dark, as they turned the rusty chain. Now when I looked down at the road, I only saw it dimly through the thickening mist—now I saw it not at all—nothing but undulating fleecy sheets of opaque cloud. Their legs completely hidden, the cattle on the marsh lands appeared to float on the top of the mist like huge grotesquely shaped ducks that floated on a pond. Now they loomed suddenly large, now they disappeared, as I pushed my way along the road. Rye must be reached ere the clock struck again in the church on the hill. And always the mist was rising. Now it was up to my chin, now I was completely engulfed, now my head was clear once more. I missed the road and dithered frightfully on the edge of the ditch. I regained my balance with a thrill of exquisite relief, but I could hear the preliminary whirring of wheels, the clock was about to strike. Too late, too late. I had failed. I ran full tilt into a gate across the road, there was a crash, and I woke with a start.
The moon had moved round and shone full on my bedroom door. Too late, too late, too late, went throbbing through my head like a dirge. I gazed stupidly at the door, still half asleep and wondering why the mist had so quickly lifted. But God, how I loathed the moonlight. Too late, too late—— Janet, brave lonely Janet, was she safe? Too late, what could these unaided repetitions portend?
I sprang to the door. The landing was black, and the moonlight through my open doorway lit it like a spotlight playing on a darkened stage. I sniffed the air, a sweet sickly smell greeted my nostrils. Half familiar, then I recognized it for what it was—the unhealthy enervating smell of escaping gas. Cook in her fuddled drunken state must have made some blunder when she turned it off down below stairs. There was no gas in the house above the basement, so it must be coming from there. I slipped on my dressing-gown and hurried down. When I opened the door that tops the basement stairs it met me in a pungent wave. I closed the door with a bang; no one could go down there in safety, that was obvious.
There were movements on the stairs above, and I switched on the light in the hall.
It was Janet. God bless her, how dainty she looked. The Tundish was following close at her heels, and I nearly cried out my alarm when I saw him just above her. How strange, I thought, that just those two in all the house should have been wakeful enough to hear.
“Hello, Jeffcock, we seem to take it in turn to prowl the house at night, and get caught in the act. What’s amiss?”
“Gas. Can’t you smell it? The basement’s full. We shall have to open a window from the outside before we can turn it off.”
The doctor ran toward the dispensary, and I unbolted the front door and ran out into the night, followed by Janet. We descended the area steps, and peered in through the kitchen window. We could see nothing. It was impossible to see.
“Here goes,” I said, kicking in a pane of glass. Slipping in my hand, I unlatched the window and threw it wide open. The reek poured out into our faces and we had to step back to let it disperse. The Tundish ran down the area steps, a bundle of wet towels in his arms.