about eleven o’clock lizzie straker’s restlessness overflowed into action. she got up, whispered something to joan gaunt, and was about to push her way through the young fir trees when the elder woman called her back.
“we must keep together.”
“i can’t loaf about here any longer. i’m catching cold. and i promised to keep a look-out in the lane.”
joan gaunt brought out her electric lamp and glanced at her watch.
“it is only just eleven.”
“he said he might be here early.”
obviously lizzie straker meant to have her way, and her having it meant that joan and eve had to break camp and move into the timber track that joined the lane. the night was fairly dark, but joan gaunt had taken care to scatter torn scraps of white paper between the clump of firs and the woodland track. a light wind had risen, and the black boughs of the firs swayed vaguely against the sky. the sandy track was banked with furze, broom, and young birch trees, and here and there between the heather were little islands of short sweet turf that had been nibbled by rabbits. joan gaunt and eve spread their coats on one of these patches of turf, while lizzie straker went on towards the lane to watch for galahad.
eve heard the turret clock at fernhill strike twelve. the wind in the trees kept up a constant under-chant, so that the subdued humming of kentucky’s car as it crept up the lane was hardly distinguishable from the wind-song overhead. two beams of light swung into the dark colonnade, thrusting yellow rays in among the firs, and splashing on the gorse and heather. the big car was crawling dead slow, with lizzie straker standing on the step and holding on to one of the hood-brackets. jones, the chauffeur, was driving.
“here we are.”
lizzie straker jumped down excitedly.
“it was a good thing i went. he’d have missed the end of the lane. wouldn’t you, old sport?”
“i was looking for you, you know, and not for sign-posts.”
“get along, sir! you’re not half serious enough.”
“that’s good. and me asking for penal servitude and playing the hero.”
he climbed out.
“you had better turn her here, jones, so that we shall have her nose pointing the right way if we have to get off in a hurry. hallo, miss gaunt, you ought to be out in the balkans doing the florence nightingale! what!”
lizzie straker was keeping close to him, with that air of ownership that certain women assume towards men who are faithful to no particular woman.
“is miss carfax with you?”
lizzie laughed.
“rather! she’s here all right. we are going to make her do the lighting up to-night.”
“plenty of inflammable stuff here, miss carfax. you can include me if you like.”
but the joke did not carry.
the chauffeur had turned the car and put out the lamps. the war material was stored in a big locker under the back seat, and consisted of a couple of cans of petrol, half a sack of shavings, and a bundle of tow. the chauffeur passed them out to kentucky, who had taken off his heavy coat and thrown it into the car.
“now then, all ready, comrades?”
“joan knows the way!”
eve’s mute acceptance of the adventure was not destined to survive the night-march through the fir woods. she was walking beside joan gaunt, who led the attacking party, lizzie straker shadowing lawrence kentucky, jones, the chauffeur, carrying the petrol cans and bringing up the rear. the grey sandy track wound like a ribbon among the black boles of the firs, whose branches kept up a sibilant whispering as the night wind played through them.
it struck eve that they were going in the wrong direction.
“we are walking away from fernhill!”
joan gaunt snapped a retort out of the darkness.
“we are not going to fernhill.”
eve was puzzled. she might have asked in the words of unregenerate man, “then where the devil are you going?”
in another moment she had guessed at their objective, remembering canterton’s cottage that stood white and new and empty, under the black benisons of the tall firs. her cottage! she thought of it instantly as something personal and precious, something that was symbolical, something that these pétroleuses should never harm.
“what are you going to burn this time?”
“a new house that belongs to the cantertons of fernhill.”
eve’s sense of humour was able to snatch one instant’s laughter from the unexpectedness of the adventure. what interplay life offered. what a jest circumstances were working off on her. she was being challenged to declare herself, subjected to a solomon’s judgment, posed by being asked to destroy something that had been created for the real woman in herself.
she was conscious of a tense feeling at the heart, and a quickening of her breathing. the physical part of her was to be embroiled. she heard lizzie straker giggling noiselessly, and the sound angered her, touched some red spot in her brain. she felt her muscles quivering.
“would it be the cottage?”
her doubts were soon set at rest, for joan gaunt turned aside along a broad path that led through a dense plantation. it was thick midnight here, but as the trees thinned eve saw a whiteness shining through—the white walls of canterton’s cottage.
for the moment her brain felt fogged. she was trembling on the edge of action, yet still held back and waited.
the whole party hesitated on the edge of the wood, the women and lawrence kentucky speaking in whispers.
“seems all right!”
“silent as the proverbial tomb!”
“i’ll go round and reconnoitre.”
he stole off with jerky, striding vehemence, pushed through a young thuja hedge, and disappeared behind the house. in two minutes he was back again, spitting with satisfaction.
“splendid! all dark and empty oh. come forrard. we’ll persuade one of the front windows.”
they pushed through between the soft cypresses and reached the lawn in front of the cottage where the grey stone path went from the timber porch to the hedge of yews. kentucky and the chauffeur piled their war-plant in the porch, and being rapid young gentlemen, lost no time in attacking one of the front windows.
“we are not going to burn this house!”
eve hardly knew her own voice when she spoke. it sounded so thin, and quiet, and cold.
lizzie straker whisked round like a snappy terrier.
“what did you say?”
“this house is not going to be burnt.”
“what rot are you talking?”
“i mean just what i say.”
“don’t talk bosh!”
“i tell you, i am in earnest.”
lizzie straker made a quick movement, and snatched at eve’s wrist. she thrust her face forward with a kind of back-street truculence.
“what d’you mean?”
“what i have said.”
“joan, d’you hear? she’s trying to rat. what’s the matter with you?”
“nothing. only i have ceased to believe in these methods.”
“oh, you have, have you!”
even in the dim light eve could see the expanded nostrils and threatening eyes.
“let my wrist go!”
“not a bit of it. what’s this particular house to you? what have you turned soft for? out with it. i suppose there’s a man somewhere at the back of your mind.”
there was a sound in lizzie straker’s voice that reminded eve of the ripping of calico.
“i am simply telling you that this cottage is not going to be burnt.”
“joan, d’you hear that? you—you can’t stop it!”
eve twisted free.
“i have only to shout rather strenuously. the fernhill people are on the alert. unless you tell mr. kentucky, or galahad as you please to call him——”
lizzie straker sprang at her like a wild cat.
“sneak, rat, moral prostitute!”
eve had never had to face such a mad thing, a thing that was so tempestuously and hysterically vindictive. lizzie straker might have been bred in the slums and taught to bite and kick and scratch like a frenzied animal.
“you beast! you sneak! we shan’t burn the place, shan’t we? leave her to me, joan, i say. i’ll teach her to play the traitor!”
eve was a strong young woman, but she was attacked by a fanatic who was not too furious to forget the japanese tricks she had learnt at a wrestling school.
“i’ve got you. i’ll pin you down, you beastly sneak!”
she tripped eve and threw her, and squirming over her, pinioned eve’s right arm in such a way that she had her at her mercy.
“you little brute, you’re breaking my arm!”
“i will break it, if you don’t lie still.”
joan gaunt had been watching the tussle, ready to intervene if her comrade were in danger of being worsted. lawrence kentucky and the chauffeur had their heads inside the window that they had just succeeded in forcing, when the porch door opened suddenly, and a man rushed out. he swung round, pivoting by one hand round one of the corner posts of the porch, and was on the two men at the window before they could run. to joan gaunt, who had turned as the door opened, it was like watching three shadows moving against the white wall of the cottage. the big attacking shadow flung out long arms, and the lesser shadows toppled and melted into the obscurity of mother earth.
“lizzie, look out!”
joan gaunt had plenty of pluck, but she was sent staggering by a hand-off that would have grassed most full-backs in the kingdom. canterton bent over the two women. one hand gripped lizzie straker’s back, crumpling up the clothes between the shoulder blades, the other went under her chin.
“let go!”
“i shan’t. i’ll break her arm if——”
but the primitive and male part of canterton had thrown off the little niceties of civilisation. thumb and fingers came together mercilessly, and with the spasm of her crushed larynx, lizzie straker let go her hold.
“you damned cat!”
he lifted her bodily, and pitched her two yards away on to the grass.
“come on, you chaps. collar those two beggars over there!”
there were no men to back him, but the ruse answered. joan gaunt had clutched lizzie straker, dragged her up, dazed and coughing, and was hurrying her off towards the fir woods. lawrence kentucky and jones, the chauffeur, had also taken to their heels, and had reached the thuja hedge behind the house. the party coalesced, broke through, melted away into the darkness.
eve was on her feet, breathless, and white with a great anger. she knew that just at the moment that canterton had used his strength, lizzie straker had tried to break her arm.
