He set about disguising it—and did a job which would have satisfied the most meticulous Director of Camouflage. He used a fallen shutter, and a great dead log, and many armfuls of wild grass and leases.
And while he was collecting these things he found the well. It was at the back, in a little overgrown clearing among the firs. It had a winch, and no rotting rope but a thick-linked chain stretching weightily down into the blackness of the shaft. The chain was rust-covered, but the rust had not eaten far into the good metal. He did not dare use the winch—in his mind he could hear the tortured, penetrating screaming it would make—and he unwound the chain with gentle care and then pulled it carefully upwards until he saw a bucket dangling at its end and then lowered it again until the bucket struck water with a soft, hollow splash.
He pulled up the first bucketful and found it brackish and foul with the dirt of the pail itself. He scoured the metal with earth and discovered that, miraculously, it did not leak.
And, twenty minutes later, he was in the house again and carefully carrying down into the cellar a supply of water which was cool and clear and tasted, faintly and pleasantly, of the rich earth from which it came.
He set the bucket down without sound and lit a candle and looked at Clare. She still slept. She had not moved. He went back up the steps and fixed a piece of twine to the inner bolt of the door-flap and pulled it shut. He sat himself down by the orderly pile of their provisions and thought that he would smoke a cigarette.
But he did not. Even as he reached for the opened packet in the pocket of his sweater, a great lassitude of utter fatigue wrapped numbing arms about his limbs and body. He lay down upon the hard beaten earth and stretched himself straight and slept.
He was wakened by a sound. He did not know how long he had slept. He concentrated upon the sound. It came at regular and heartbreaking intervals. It was muffled and desolate. It was the sound of weeping.
He crossed to her quickly and sat upon the edge of the canvas beside her and put out a hand and touched her shoulder. The candle, more than half burned through, sent a flickering light from its corner and he could see that she now lay prone, her face buried in her arms.
He sat silent and in agony. He had not believed that anything could hurt him as the sound and feel of this sobbing hurt him. He could not speak, but his hand upon her shoulder moved perpetually in useless, unconscious little movements.
Then she stirred. He had not known whether she knew that he was there until, with a wild quick lifting of her body, she was upon her knees beside him as he sat and her hands were clutching his shoulders with fingers which hurt his flesh and her head was burrowed into his chest and a new storm of weeping, unchecked, was sleeping over her.
Otto sat rigid and unmoving while it ran its violent course. It began to subside—and it died a quicker death than had seemed possible.
She thrust herself gently away from him. The ghost of a sob shook her body—and then, unbelievably, she smiled at him, through the drying tears and the traces of their forerunners. And she spoke. She said:
“Nils!” and her voice quivered a little. But it was her own voice again. She said:
“I’m sorry! I’m all right now. I had to cry. I won’t any more!”
He could not speak. He put out his hand and for a moment closed his fingers over her two hands as they lay in her lap.
Outside and above their refuge dusk deepened into night but there were three candles lighted in the cellar now and their golden flames, flickering faintly in the draught from the shrouded bolt-hole, made soft light and softer shadow.
Clare sat cross-legged upon her bed of canvas, and Otto, at the further side of their warren, neatly piled the dishes from which they had eaten the meal he had cooked. They were incongruously dainty dishes, taken, with the heavy silver knives and forks, from the oaken sideboard in the room above their heads. The sweet, heavy smell of coffee hung in the still air and mingled with the sharper scent of tobacco.
They had not spoken much since Clare, with a courage which somehow gave to Otto perhaps more pain than her weeping, had become herself again. She smoked now, and watched him. She said suddenly:
“You must let me talk to you, Nils. Turn around and look at me!”