Miss Silver Comes To Stay

CHAPTER 14

Elizabeth Moore sat with a book on her lap, but she wasn’t reading. She had turned off the wireless after listening to the headlines of the nine o’clock news. Her mind refused to leap the Atlantic, the Channel, traverse the wastes of Europe and Asia, and concern itself with the follies which men were perpetrating hundreds of thousands of miles away. There are moments when the world contracts to what is happening to one person. Elizabeth ’s world had so contracted. There was only one person it it-Carr. She herself was present only as a striving against pain. Fancy hovered vaguely as a threat. But Carr wandered alone in that small, empty world. He was in torment, and she couldn’t go to him, or touch him, or help him. A line came to her from her schooldays:

“Yes: in the sea of life enisl’d…

We mortal millions live alone.”

And it was true-when it came down to brass tacks you had to work things out for yourself. Another line came to her, from the Bible this time, full of haunting melancholy beauty: “No man can save his brother, nor make agreement unto God for him, for it cost more than that to redeem their souls, so that he must let it alone for ever.”

It was on this that she stretched out her hand to the bookcase without even looking to see what book it was that she had taken. It lay open upon her lap, and it was just white paper and black print, as dead to her as if the script had been Phoenician.

She did not know whether the time was long or short before she heard the tapping on the window. The room was at the back of the house. She lifted the curtain and saw only the black night pressing up against the glass like another curtain. Then in the dark something moved. A hand came up to knock again. Carr said her name.

It was a casement window with a low sill. She threw it wide, and he came in and pulled it to behind him. She let the curtain fall into its place, and saw his ghastly look, his shaking hands. They caught at her and held her, weighing her down until she came to a chair and dropped upon it. Then he was on his knees, his head against her, his whole body shaken. It was as if they had stumbled through the everyday crust into a dream where the most fantastic things are as natural as the drawing of one’s breath. She put her arms round him and held him until the shuddering died down and he was still, his head against her breast, her arms holding him. She knew that she had said his name, and that he had repeated hers over and over like a cry for help. If there had been other words, she did not know. They were in her thought, they beat with her blood, but she did not know if they passed her lips, or whether they reached him without sound on a pure tide of comforting love.

“What is it, my darling?”

She heard herself say that, and felt him shudder.

“Don’t let me go!”

“Carr-what is it?”

He told her then, lifting his head and speaking just above a whisper, as if the breath had gone out of him and he had to struggle for it.

“That man-I told you about-the one who took Marjory away-and left her-I saw his photograph-in a paper. It’s James Lessiter-”

She said with a gasp, “Carr, what have you done?”

“I haven’t-I thought I should if I stayed.”

The fear which had touched her was still cold at her heart.

“What happened?”

“Henry Ainger came in-he brought some papers for Rietta. Afterwards Fancy and I were looking at them-Rietta had gone to the telephone. I saw that man’s picture with his name under it-James Lessiter. I told you Marjory had kept his photograph-it was the same one. Rietta came in-I asked her, ‘Is this James Lessiter?’ After that I don’t quite know what happened. She said, ‘Yes,’ and I went out of the house- I wanted to get my hands on him-I knew I’d kill him if I did. I’ve been walking-I don’t know how long-”

She looked across his shoulder to the grandfather clock with its slow, solemn tick.

“It’s getting on for half past nine.”

“I can’t have taken an hour to get here-I suppose I did- I think I started out the other way-then I thought about you. It’s all I did think about after that-to get to you. I’ve made a damned fool of myself-”

“It doesn’t matter.”

It came to him that what she had just said was the underlying fact in their relationship. It didn’t matter what he did or said, or what anyone else did or said, whether he went away and forgot or came back and remembered, wet or shine, day or night, year in year out, the bond between them held. He couldn’t put it into words. He could only say, “No, it doesn’t matter,” and lay his head against her shoulder again.

The passion of the last hour had gone out of him, it already seemed remote and far away. There was a renewing. They stayed like that without any sense of time.

At last she said, “They won’t know where you are-they’ll be worried about you.”

Elizabeth ’s world had come back to the normal again. It held other people-Rietta Cray, who must be terribly worried, and Jonathan Moore, who would be coming home after an evening’s chess with Dr. Craddock. She got up and began to make tea, fetching the kettle from the kitchen, moving about the small domestic tasks as if they were the whole of love and service. It was perhaps the happiest hour that she had ever known. To receive back all that you have lost, all that you have not even hoped for, to be allowed to give again what you have kept unspent, is joy beyond words. She had not many words.

Carr was silent too. He had travelled a long way-not the two and a half miles from Melling, but the five years through which he had come to reach this place again. When she said, “You must go,” he put his arms round her and said her name.

“ Elizabeth -”

“Carr-”

“ Elizabeth -are you going to take me back?”

“Do you want me to?”

“You know.”

There was a little pause before she said,

“Can you-come back?”

“Do you mean-about Fancy?”

“You said you didn’t know whether you were engaged to her.”

He gave a shaky laugh.

“That was just talking. We had it out on the way home. She’s a nice kid really-quite sensible and matter-of-fact. ‘No offence meant, and none taken,’ as her estimable Mum would say, so that’s all right. I’ve come back like a bad shilling. Are you going to have me?”

Elizabeth said, “I can’t help it.”