The evening passed like a dream. Lady Heritage did not appear at all, and Jane found a strange unreality in the situation which kept her talking to Mr. Ember in set schoolgirl phrases whilst he condescended to her with more than a hint of sarcasm. She was glad when she could take a book and read.
It was eleven o’clock before she dared begin her night’s work, but she came up to her room with her plan all ready. First she took off her dress and put on a dressing-gown, just in case any one should come to the door. Then, having turned the key and switched off the light, she took a candle into the cupboard, set it on a shoe box, and took down the lists. She put a cushion on the floor, fetched Renata’s fountain pen and some sheets of foolscap which she had taken from the library, and began her work of copying. With the cupboard door shut there was no chance that any one would see her candle.
She wrote steadily, town after town, name after name. More towns, more names. As she finished each sheet, she checked it very carefully by its original. It was weary, monotonous work; but the weariness and the monotony were like a grey curtain which hung between her and something which she dreaded inexpressibly.
The idea of descending into the passage again, of creeping up to the laboratory in order to put back the lists before they were missed, filled her with shuddering repugnance. To allow her mind to dwell upon this idea was to become incapable of carrying it out. She therefore held her attention firmly to the endless names, and drove an industrious pen. She had to get up twice for more ink. Each time, as she stretched herself and walked the few paces to the table and back, the thought came to her like a cold breath, “It’s coming nearer.”
At last, in the dead stillness of the sleeping hours, the lists were finished. She pinned the copies on to the cupboard ceiling in the same way that she had pinned the originals, carefully covered with a piece of cartridge paper. Then she took the originals in her hand and faced the necessity for action. Her feet and hands were very cold. She felt as if it were days since she had had anything to eat. She wanted most dreadfully to go to bed and sleep. She wanted to have a good cry. What she had to do was to go down into slug- and possibly rat-haunted passages and risk waking an Anarchist Uncle out of his beauty sleep. Jane gave herself a mental shake.
“Don’t be a rabbit, Jane Smith,” she said. “It’s got to be done. You know that just as well as I do. If it’s got to be done, you can do it. Get going at once.”
She got going. First she put the lists back in her stocking top. Then she put on the old serge dress. Her fancy played hopefully with the thought that some day she would give herself the pleasure of burning that abominable garment. She extracted the maroon felt slippers from the paper parcel to which she had consigned them. They were still sopping. She put them on. They felt limp, damp, and discouraging, but they had the merit of making no noise. Then she took a good length of candle and a box of matches and opened her door.
“Well, here goes,” said Jane, and stepped into pitch darkness. This time she shut the door behind her. As she took her hand off the handle she felt as if she were letting go of her last hold on safety, an idiotic thought, as she instantly told herself. She knew by now just how many paces took one to the place where the light should have been burning, and just how many more to the stairhead. The rose window showed like a pattern painted on the dark. It gave no light, but it marked the position of the door.
Jane felt the soles of her feet stick and cling to the damp slippers as she crawled down the stairs. They just didn’t squelch and that was all; they only felt like it.
She hated moving the big chair in the dark, but it had to be done. Suppose she dropped it with a crash, suppose she pulled Willoughby Luttrell’s picture down when she was feeling for the catch; suppose a mouse ran over her foot—there is no end to the cheerful suppositions which will throng one’s brain in circumstances like these.