The empty silence of the house began to close in upon her. The little sounds which she had been making were at an end.
They had gone into the silence and the emptiness and been swallowed up. She began to think of all the times she had been alone in a house without minding it in the least. Why on earth should she mind now? The fact that the house was empty was neither here nor there. Sofas and tables and chairs, and a carpet on the floor-there is really nothing about these to make you feel safe. If there were a carpet on this stair, it would be a little less hard to sit on, but that was all. If she knew that she had only to cross the hall, open a door, and come into a comfortable furnished room, she would not be any more secure than she was at this moment. She was, of course, perfectly secure. The door was locked, and no one could get in without the key which was on Jim Severn’s ring. There was no one but herself in the house.
There was silence, and emptiness, and cold. And now the silence began fantastically to quiver, as if there was a pressure upon it and it might be going to break. Ione pulled her thought up sharply. This, at least, she knew for what it was, a thing out of nursery days when she would lie awake at the top of a tall old house and wait for the everydayness about her to splinter and let through all the terrors of a child’s imagination-thin sliding shadows and broad rolling ones-things that bounced and were suddenly not there any more-things that lurked and made faces at you just out of sight.
The imagination was still a very lively one, but she had it under much better control. She could tell it now quite firmly that it was playing tricks and switch it over to devising a new monologue. Not one about an empty house! That was the sort you could do more comfortably in a lighted room in front of a nice warm fire. This one might be about a girl who got into the wrong house and stumbled on something she wasn’t meant to know. Quite effective if she could hit on just the right vein… When Jim Severn’s key turned in the lock she was a long way off.
The air outside was cold. She could see all the street-lamps. Even at the end of the road there was only a little mist to blur them. As long as she was careful with her ankle it felt all right. In fact everything in the garden was lovely. She looked at Jim Severn, and he looked at her. She had known that he was tall because of where his voice came from when she ran into him. She saw now that he held himself well, and that he was goodlooking in a pleasant, unobtrusive sort of way. It seemed a pity that she couldn’t have done a better job on her face. First impressions-
What Jim Severn saw was a girl in a torn fur coat with dark hair falling rather straight on either side of a very pale face. He knew already that she had a voice that was not like any other. When it spoke to him out of the fog his ear had been charmed and his imagination captured. It was that kind of voice. Now that he looked at her, he could only think how pale she was and hope that she wasn’t going to faint again. Then he noticed that she had rather amusing eyebrows like little slanting wings. In the lamplight her eyes looked dark.
After that blind groping through the fog the smooth motion of the car was like a beautiful dream. To be able to see across the street and away to the end of it, to be carried along without having to force reluctant feet to carry her, not to have to bother about what was going to happen next-all this was part of the dream. There was also the thought that there might be hot coffee and a bath.
It wasn’t until they were out of the car and half way to the second floor in an automatic lift that she remembered Jim Severn’s old nurse. She ought to have been relying firmly on her, but she had just let her drift into the background of her mind. She couldn’t-no she couldn’t really pretend that anybody’s old nurse was going to be pleased when her Mr. Jim turned up in the middle of the night with a strange girl.
His key turned in the lock and they came into a small pleasant hall with a light burning. She found herself hoping passionately that Nannie was one of those people who could sleep through anything.
The hope failed before she had time to nourish it. From a door on the left there emerged a figure in a quilted dressing-gown of navy blue silk with a good deal of white hair disposed for the night under a strong brown net. There were firm rosy cheeks, and the sort of bright blue eyes that give you the impression that you are being gone over with a magnifying-glass.
Jim Severn hastened to say his piece.
“Nannie, this is Miss Muir. We’ve been held up in the fog, and I’m afraid she has hurt herself. Barbara’s room is ready, isn’t it?”
The blue eyes transferred their gaze to him.
“It’s never been otherwise since we come here.” They returned to Ione. “Good-evening, Miss Muir.” The air fairly crisped with frost.
Ione said in a lovely piteous voice,
“Oh, Nannie, I know it looks dreadful, but I fell down some area steps-and Mr. Severn has been so kind. Do you think-oh, do you think I could possibly have a wash?”
It might have been one thing, or it might have been another. It might have been the quality of the voice or the quiver in it, or just the drawn fatigue of the face out of which two candid eyes looked into hers, but the temperature underwent a marked improvement. Nannie knew a lady when she saw and heard one, green slime or no green slime, and she knew when what was wanted was a hot bath, and a hot drink, and a nice warm bed.
It was while she was laying down the law on these lines that Jim Severn was understood to say that he must go and put away the car.
Nannie threw open the bathroom door.
“Constant hot water is what we have, and it’s not everyone can say that. Now, miss, here’s your towel, and I’ll just go and get you one of Miss Barbara’s nightgowns, and the dressing-gown she keeps here, and some slippers. Eh, dear, but you’ve laddered your stockings-past doing anything to by the look of them! And a tear in your coat-but that will mend. Fur tears easy, and it mends easy too.”
She bustled away, and came back again with an amusing flowered dressing-gown, scarlet slippers, and an extremely decorative nightdress.
“Now, my dear, you just have a nice hot bath. And you needn’t spare the water-it does two easy. But you’d better not be too long, for Mr. Jim will be wanting his. There’s some of Miss Barbara’s bath-salts in that jar.”
It was a heavenly bath, and when it was over there was a heavenly hot drink and a soft, delicious bed. By the time Nannie had tucked her in, opened the window, and put out the light she might have been ordering her about since she was three years old. She didn’t go to sleep. She plunged into it. Dreamless depths closed over her.
CHAPTER 4
The ice never formed again. Nannie brought her a cup of tea at eight, and told her all about Barbara whilst she was drinking it. It appeared that she had ceased to be Miss Barbara to anyone except Nannie for the last ten years or so. She was Lady Carradyne.
“And Sir Humphrey is a very nice gentleman. Wonderful interested in everything to do with the land like a gentleman ought to be, and does very well at it too, so Miss Barbara says. They’ve got a boy of eight and a half, and a little girl of five-a real little love. But of course I couldn’t leave Mr. Jim, so I recommended my niece. And if Miss Barbara has a mind to come up to town and stay over, well, there’s her room always ready, and no need to let us know. She’s got her key and can just walk in.” Ione checked the thought that it was just as well that Barbara hadn’t walked in at, say, four o’clock in the morning to find a strange girl in her bed.
Nannie went on talking. By the time Ione was dressed, with a pair of Barbara’s stockings to take the place of her ruined ones, she knew what an old and distinguished firm of architects Jim Severn belonged to. There were two uncles in it, and one of them wouldn’t be very long before he retired, and then Mr. Jim would go up a step.