Miss Silver Comes To Stay (2 page)

Catherine Welby came out of the Gate House, passed between the pillars which marked the entrance to Melling House, and walked along the footpath to the White Cottage. The grass verges on either side were still green although it was late September. A single glance at them showed what kind of summer it had been, but this afternoon it was fine, and so warm that Catherine was even a little too warm in the pale grey flannel coat and skirt which threw up the fairness of her skin and the bright red gold of her hair. She was, as Mrs. Voycey said, a very pretty woman, her figure still slender and her eyes as deep a blue as they had been when she was eighteen. But over and above her prettiness she had something which is far more uncommon. Whatever she wore appeared to be just right both for herself and for the occasion. Her hair was always in the same becoming waves, never too formal, never untidy.

She went in through a small white gate and up a flagged path, pushed open Miss Cray’s front door, and called,

“Rietta!”

In the sitting-room Rietta Cray gave a quick frown which brought out the likeness to her nephew and called back,

“I’m here. Come in!”

If there was one person she didn’t want to see at this moment it was Catherine Welby. She did not as a matter of fact wish to see anyone at all, but if you live in a village, it’s no good not wanting to see people, because you have to. She was perfectly well aware that James Lessiter’s return had set everyone remembering that they had once been engaged, and wondering how they would feel and look, and what they would say when they met. Twenty years is a long time, but not long enough to let a village forget.

She did not get up when Catherine came in, but continued to bend forward over the table at which she was cutting a child’s frock out of an odd length of material. She had known Catherine for too many years to disturb herself, and if she were to take the hint and think her too busy to be disturbed, there would be no harm done. Her scissors snipped through the end of the stuff before she looked up to see Catherine lighting a cigarette.

“You look very busy, Rietta. Garments for the poor?”

The quick frown appeared again. In some curious way it gave a young, impulsive look to the dark, straight features. No one had ever called Rietta pretty—her cast of looks was too severe for that. “Pallas Athene, with a touch of the Gorgon’s head,” as a friend of James Lessiter’s had once said after being snubbed. But she had her moments of beauty— fleeting, stormy moments for the most part. As to the rest, her hair was dark, her eyes grey and finely lashed, her figure in the Greek tradition, and her manner a little on the abrupt side. She looked up now and said,

“What is it?”

Catherine had made herself very comfortable on the window-seat.

“Well, really, Rietta! You know, sewing isn’t your line—it always puts you in a bad temper. You ought to be thankful to me for coming round and interrupting you.”

“Well, I’m not. I want to get this done.”

Catherine waved her cigarette.

“I’m not stopping you, darling—you go on pinning the thing together. I just thought I’d come around and ask you whether you’ve seen James yet.”

This time Rietta didn’t let herself frown. She had a moment of black rage, because of course this was what everyone in Melling was wanting to know. Then she said in the expressionless voice which goes with being angry,

“No. Why should I?”

“I don’t know—you might have. As a matter of fact I haven’t either, but of course he only came last night. I wonder what he’s like, and whether he’s worn as well as we have. You know, Rietta, if you took the least trouble, you could look—well, thirty-four.”

“I don’t in the least want to look thirty-four.”

Catherine’s dark blue eyes opened widely.

“What’s the good of saying a silly thing like that? What you need is colour—you always did—and a softer expression. You ought to practise in front of the glass.”

Rietta’s lip twitched. Her anger was gone. She could enjoy Catherine. A picture of herself practising soft expressions at a looking-glass assuaged her a good deal.

“We might practise them together,” she said.

Catherine blew out a light cloud of smoke.

“Now you’re laughing at me. I thought you were going to bite my head off when I came in. I do wonder if James has got fat. Such a pity if he has—he was so nicelooking. You did make a most awfully handsome couple—only of course he ought to have fallen in love with somebody fair like me. You know, it was very nice of me not to try and take him away from you.”

Rietta Cray lifted those fine grey eyes of hers and allowed them to dwell for a moment upon Catherine. Since it was perfectly well known between them that Catherine had tried and failed, there appeared to be no need to say anything more about it. Rietta therefore said nothing. After a moment she went on pinning the small pink frock.

Catherine laughed amiably and returned to James Lessiter.

“I don’t know whether it’s worse to get stout or scraggy. James must be forty-five.” She drew at her cigarette and added, “He’s coming in to have coffee with me tonight. You’d better come too.”

“No, thank you.”

“You’d better. You’ll have to meet him some time. Get it over in a sensible friendly way when you can be looking your best, instead of bumping into him anywhere by chance when your hair is coming down in the rain, or half the village is lined up watching to see how you take it.”

For a brief moment a bright touch of scarlet gave Rietta Cray the colour she lacked. A dangerous anger had set it glowing. It was instantly controlled. She said,

“We’re not schoolgirls. There is nothing to take. If James is going to be here, naturally we shall meet. But I shall be very much surprised if he stays for long. He will find Melling very dull.”

“He has made a lot of money,” said Catherine in a pensive voice. “Look here, Rietta, do come off your high horse! It’s going to make a lot of difference to have Melling open again, and after all, you and I are James’s oldest friends. It can’t be very cheerful for him coming back to an empty house. I do think we must give him a bit of a welcome. Come along in to coffee this evening!”

Rietta gave her a straight look. It would have been so much more natural for Catherine to want to have—and keep— James Lessiter to herself. She was up to something, and presently, no doubt, the cat would slip out of the bag. Or most likely not a cat at all, but one of Catherine’s sleek, silky kittens, with innocent eyes and whiskers dripping with cream. Only you don’t get cream in bags, or anywhere else in this post-war world. She said nothing, only looked and allowed herself to smile just enough to let Catherine see that she hadn’t got away with it.

Did a little natural colour deepen the very careful tinting behind the thin haze of cigarette smoke? Catherine Welby got up gracefully and without haste.

“Well, come if you can,” she said. Then, turning before she reached the door, “Carr out?”

“He and Fancy have gone in to Lenton.”

Catherine Welby laughed.

“Is he going to marry her?”

“I shouldn’t advise you to ask him. I haven’t.”

“He’ll be damned silly if he does. She’s too like Marjory. It’ll be the same story all over again.”

“You haven’t any right to say that.”

Catherine blew her a kiss.

“Waste of time trying to high-hat me—you ought to know that after all these years. I’m just using my common sense, and you’d better use yours and choke him off if you don’t want another crash—I should think it would just about finish him. Did he ever find out who Marjory went off with?”

“No.”

“Well, she saved everyone a lot of trouble by not surviving. I mean, after she’d come back down and out and he’d taken her in and nursed her, he couldn’t very well have got a divorce, could he? Solitary instance of tact on her part, but rather wasted if he’s going to do the same thing all over again. Well, I’ll be seeing you.”

Fancy Bell looked sideways under her long lashes and observed her companion’s gloom. With a faint sigh she turned to the much more agreeable spectacle of her own enchanting face and figure reflected in the looking-glass at the back of a milliner’s window. A bit daring that scarlet—hit or miss, as you might say—but to judge from the way in which practically every man they passed had looked and looked again, it was a hit all right. A lovely contrast they made, her and Carr. Very goodlooking he was—nobody could say anything different. And of course nothing like that dark, gloomy type for making a fair girl look even fairer than she was. And he was ever so nice really, only it would make things a lot easier if he would smile a bit and look as if he was enjoying her company. But of course you couldn’t have everything.

There was a hard core of common sense behind that very decorative façade. You couldn’t have everything, so you had to make up your mind just what you wanted most. Young men with plenty of money asked you to go away for weekends. Well, she wasn’t that sort of girl and she let them know it—no offence meant and none taken, but they didn’t generally try it on a second time. The show-girl business was all very well while it lasted, but it didn’t last for ever. The sensible person who was Frances expected Fancy to get her a chance of settling in life, and she knew just what she wanted—a lift in the world, but not such a big one that your in-laws were going to look down on you—enough money to have a nice little home and, say, three children—and someone to do all the rough work, because you don’t want to let yourself go, and she’d always kept her hands nice. Of course she’d have to do a good bit, especially after the babies came. She wouldn’t mind that. Frances had it all planned out. She was considering whether Carr Robertson would do for the lead in this private play of hers. He had a job and he had a little money of his own, and Fancy would find it quite easy to be in love with him, but Frances wasn’t going to let her do anything silly.

She put up a hand and pulled at his sleeve.

“Here’s the place Mrs. Welby said, where she has her hair done. I’ll be an hour, if you can put in the time. Sure you can?”

He said, “Oh, yes,” in an indifferent tone.

“All right. And then we’ll have tea. So long.”

He watched her go with a curious feeling of relief. There was going to be a whole hour in which nothing would be expected of him. He needn’t talk, make love, or abstain from making love. His feeling was very much like that with which one sometimes sees one’s guests depart. Their presence may have been welcome, their company enjoyed, but there is something about having your house to yourself again. Only when he did have it to himself there was always the possibility that the welcome solitude would be invaded by an unlaid ghost—Marjory’s step on the stair… her laughter, and her tears… her failing voice: “No—no—I’ll never tell you his name. I don’t want you to kill him. No, Carr—no!”

A real voice broke in upon his mood. He glanced up with the quick nervous frown so like Rietta’s and saw Mr. Holderness looking benevolent. One of his earliest recollections was the benevolence of Mr. Holderness accompanied by a half-crown tip. As far as Carr could see, he hadn’t changed a bit—dignified presence, florid complexion, kindly gaze, and rich rolling voice—general slight flavour of the eighteenth century from which his office with its Georgian panelling had never emerged. The firm had ranked as old-fashioned county solicitors then, and the tradition had been maintained ever since. He clapped Carr on the shoulder and enquired whether he was down for long.

“Rietta will be glad to have you. How is she? Not working too hard, I hope. Last time I saw her I thought she was looking as if she had been overdoing it, and she told me she couldn’t get any help in the garden.”

“No, she’s had to give up the vegetables. She hasn’t much help in the house either—only Mrs. Fallow for a couple of hours twice a week. I think she does do too much.”

“Take care of her, my boy, take care of her. Good people are scarce, and she won’t look after herself—women never will. Between ourselves, they’ve every virtue except common sense. But don’t say I said so. No witnesses, you know, and I shall deny it—I shall deny it!” He let out a fine reverberant laugh. “Well, well, I mustn’t stay gossiping. I’ve been in court all day, and I must get on to the office. By the way, I hear James Lessiter is back. Have you seen him at all?”

Carr’s lips twitched into a smile as quick and nervous as his frown.

“I’ve never seen him in my life. He was off the map before I fetched up in Melling.”

“Yes, yes—of course—so he was. And now he’s come back a rich man. Pleasant to come across a success story once in a way—very pleasant indeed. You haven’t seen him since he got back?”

“I don’t think anyone has. As a matter of fact I believe he only arrived last night. Mrs. Fallow has been up there helping the Mayhews.”

“Ah, yes—Mrs. Lessiter’s cook and butler—very worthy people. Mayhew calls in at the office every week for their wages. That is how I knew that James was expected. He’ll be ringing me up, I expect. It’s made a lot of work, his being out of the country when his mother died. Well, goodbye, my boy. I’m glad to have seen you.”

He passed on. Carr watched him go, and felt his mood changed by the encounter. There had been a time before the world was shattered. Old Holderness belonged to that time, he might even be said to typify it. Life was secure, its circumstances stable. You had the friends you had grown up with, the friends you made at school and college. Term followed term throughout the year, with bright intervals of vacation. Half-crown tips mounted to ten shillings, to a pound. Henry Ainger had given him a fiver on his eighteenth birthday. Elizabeth Moore had given him an odd old picture of a ship. He had felt romantic about it from the first moment he saw it hanging in a dark corner of her uncle’s antique shop. Odd how a little paint and canvas can become a magic casement. He had seen himself sailing out into life on an enchanted tide—

On a sudden impulse he walked down the street, turned to the left, and stood looking in at Jonathan Moore’s shop window. There was a fine set of red and white ivory chessmen in Manchu and Chinese dress—war formalized into a game. He watched the pieces, admiring the exquisite precision of the carving, angry underneath. Then all at once he straightened up, pushed open the door, and went in. A bell tinkled, Elizabeth came to meet him. The anger dropped out of him and was gone.

She said, “Carr!” and they stood looking at one another.

It was only for a moment that he was able to look at her as if she were a stranger, because though it was nearly five years since they had met, he had known her all his life. But for just that one moment he did see her as if it was the first time—the tall light figure, the clear windblown look she had, brown hair ruffled back from the forehead, bright eager eyes, and a quick tremulous smile. He got the impression of something startled into joy, ready to take flight, to escape, to become unobtainable—the whole thing much too fleeting to pass into conscious thought. She spoke first, in the voice which he had always liked—a pretty, clear voice full of gravity and sweetness.

“Carr—how nice! It’s been such a long time, hasn’t it?”

He said, “A million years,” and then wondered why he had said it. Only it didn’t matter what you said to Elizabeth— it never had.

She put out a hand, but not to touch him. It was an old remembered gesture.

“As long as that? My poor dear! Come along through and let’s talk. Uncle Jonathan is out at a sale.”

He followed her into the little sitting-room behind the shop—shabby comfortable chairs, old-fashioned plush curtains, Jonathan Moore’s untidy desk. Elizabeth shut the door. They might have been back in the past before the deluge. She opened a cupboard, rummaged, and produced a bag of caramels.

“Do you still like them? I think you do. If you really like something you go on liking it, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know about that.”

“I do—I’m quite sure.” She laughed a little. “Whatever happens or doesn’t happen, I shall always have a passion for caramels. I’ve never stopped being thankful that I can eat them without putting on an ounce. Look here, there’s the bag between us, and we can both dip in like we used to.”

He laughed too, all the tension in him relaxed. To come back to Elizabeth was to slip into a place so accustomed, so comfortable, that you didn’t even have to think about it. An old coat, old shoes, an old friend—unromantic, undemanding, utterly restful.

She said, “Is it too early for tea? I’ll make some—” and saw him frown again.

“No. I’ve got Fancy with me—Frances Bell. We’re staying with Rietta. She’s gone in to Hardy’s to have her hair done, and she will want tea when she comes out.”

Elizabeth’s very clear eyes dwelt on him consideringly.

“You wouldn’t like to bring her in here? I’ve got quite a new cake.”

He said, “Yes, I would.”

Elizabeth nodded.

“That’s lovely. Then we can just sit and talk. Tell me about her. Is she a friend of yours?”

“No.”

He didn’t know he was going to say it, but it was no sooner said than he thought, “My God—that’s true!” What sort of a mess had he got himself into, and how far in had he got? It was like walking in your sleep and waking up to find yourself with one foot over a killing drop.

“Tell me about her, Carr. What is she like?”

The tormented look was back again. He turned it on her.

“She’s like Marjory.”

“I only saw her once. She was very pretty.” It was said without rancour, yet they both remembered that one meeting, because it was after it that Elizabeth had said, “Are you in love with her, Carr?” They were here alone together in this very room, and when he looked away and couldn’t meet her eyes she had taken off her engagement ring and laid it down on the arm of the chair between them, and when he still had nothing to say she had gone out through the far door and up the old stair to her own room overhead. And he had let her go.

Five years ago, but it came back like yesterday. He said,

“Why did you let me go?”

“How could I keep you?”

“You didn’t try.”

“No—I didn’t try. I didn’t want to keep you if you wanted to go.”

He was silent, because he couldn’t say, “I didn’t want to go.” He had known Elizabeth all his life, and Marjory for three short weeks. At twenty-three it is the new, the unexpected, the unknown, which evokes romance. If the enchanted distance turns upon nearer view into a desert, you have only yourself to thank. Marjory hadn’t changed—he had always had to remind himself of that.

He found himself leaning forward, his hands between his knees, words coming at first jerkily and then with a rush.

“It wasn’t her fault, you know. I was damnable to live with—and the baby died—she hadn’t got anything. Money was tight. She’d been used to having a good time—lots of people to go about with. I couldn’t give her anything to make up for it. The flat was so cramped—she hated it. I was always away, and there wasn’t any money, and when I was there I was in a filthy temper. You can’t blame her.”

“What happened, Carr?”

“I was sent to Germany. I didn’t get demobbed till the end of that year. She never wrote much, and then she didn’t write at all. I got leave, and came home to find strangers in the flat. She’d let it. No one knew where she was. When I got home for good I tried to trace her. I took on the flat again, because I had to live somewhere and I’d got this job in a literary agency. A friend of mine started it—Jack Smithers. You remember, he was up at Oxford with me. He was crocked in the war, and got away with this business before the ugly rush.”

Elizabeth said, “Yes?”

He looked up at her for a moment.

“I had a sort of idea perhaps she would come back. Well, she did. It was a bitter cold January night. I got in just short of midnight, and there she was, huddled up on the divan. She must have been pretty well frozen, because she hadn’t any coat, only a thin suit. She’d got the eiderdown from the bedroom and put the electric fire on, and by the time I got in she was in a burning fever. I got a doctor, but she never had a chance. The swine she’d gone off with had left her penniless in France. She’d sold everything she had to get home. She told me that, but she wouldn’t tell me his name. She said she didn’t want me to kill him. After all he’d done to her—she talked when she was delirious, so I know—after all that she was mad about him still!”

Elizabeth’s voice came into the silence.

“She might have been thinking about you.”

He laughed angrily.

“Then she wasn’t! She kept his photograph—that’s how I know, and that’s how I’ll find him some day. It was in the back of her compact under the bit of gauze that’s supposed to keep the powder in. I expect she thought nobody would find it there, but of course she didn’t know she was going to die.” His voice went harsh. “She wouldn’t have believed it if anyone had told her.”

Elizabeth said, “Poor Marjory!”

He nodded.

“I’ve kept that photograph—I’ll find him some time. It was just the head and shoulders cut out and the cardboard scraped down at the back to make it fit, so there’s no photographer’s name, but I’ll know him if I meet him.”

“People don’t go unpunished, Carr. Don’t try and play hangman. It’s not your line.”

“Isn’t it? I don’t know—”

There was a silence. Elizabeth let it gather round them. She was leaning back now, watching him between her dark lashes, her long thin hands resting quietly on the green stuff of her skirt. The cream sweater she wore with it came up high about her long throat. There was a small pearl in the lobe of either ear.

Presently Carr began to speak again.

“Fancy’s rather like her, you know. She’s been a mannequin. At the moment she’s a show-girl—out of a job. She’s worked very hard and she wants to get on. She hopes for a part in what she calls a regular play. I shouldn’t think there’s a chance in a million that she can act. She has to be rather careful about her vowels, because they pronounce them differently in Stepney where she grew up. I believe Mum and Dad still live there, and she wouldn’t dream of cutting loose, because she’s a nice girl and very fond of her family.”