“It is rather a late hour to call, I’m afraid, but I was passing this way, and I hoped that it might be possible for me to see her. I ought to have been here earlier, but I had a puncture, and then I lost my way in your winding lanes.”
She took a step back.
“Jenny?”
“Miss Jenny Maxwell. She lives here, doesn’t she?”
“Yes-”
Her voice had a doubtful tone. A perfectly strange man coming in out of the night and wanting to see Jenny-it didn’t seem to be the sort of thing that happened, and here it was, happening. She said with a simple directness which he liked,
“I am her sister, Rosamond Maxwell. Do you mind telling me why you want to see Jenny?”
He said, “She wrote to me.”
“Jenny wrote to you?”
He nodded.
“She didn’t tell you?”
“No-no-”
“And you don’t know who I am?”
He produced a card and held it out. She read, “Mr. Craig Lester.” Under the words a second name was added in pencil- “Pethertons.”
Rosamond began to understand. She stood back a little farther. He came across the threshold, took the door from her hand, and shut it behind him.
“You mean you are from Pethertons the publishers? Jenny wrote to them?”
He laughed.
“I seem to be betraying a confidence! But she isn’t very old, is she?”
Rosamond said,
“Jenny is twelve-and she should have told me. I am just wondering where we can talk. You see, most of the house isn’t used-it will all be dreadfully cold. My aunt has her rooms, and Jenny and I have a sitting-room, but I would rather talk to you first, if you wouldn’t mind it’s being not at all warm.”
He was so much intrigued that he would have accepted an invitation to the arctic circle. Certainly he would have done a good deal more than follow her across the glimmering hall to a door which opened under the sweep of the stair.
As she switched on a single overhead light, the room sprang into view, small, with panelled walls whose ivory tint had deepened with age almost to the color of café-au-lait. There were cracks in the paint, and there were worn places in the pale flowered carpet. That was the first effect that struck him, the cool pallor of the room-brocaded curtains and coverings so faintly tinted that they might have been wraiths of their own forgotten beauty-mirrors framed in tarnished gold, the glass too dim to reflect anything more substantial than a mist. But there was no dust on the exquisite old china which graced the mantelpiece, on the William and Mary cabinet, on the elegant pie-crust table between the windows. If the room breathed the very atmosphere of disuse, it was to the eye most beautifully kept. Craig Lester’s eye was a discerning one. At a single glance it provided him with a good deal of food for thought.
He saw Rosamond seat herself, took the big winged chair which she offered him, and observed with satisfaction that her eyes were, as he had hoped, not brown or grey, but that very dark blue. But like the room, she was pale. Her lips should have been redder, and there should have been colour in her cheeks. And she was thin-the delicate line of the cheek fell in a little. He saw that her clothes were shabby-an old tweed skirt, an old blue jumper, thick country shoes. The shoes looked damp, and there was moisture caught in her hair. He felt suddenly ashamed of his own warm coat. If she had been out in those thin clothes, and he was sure she had-
To her “You really won’t be too cold here?” he found himself replying roughly,
“But it’s you. I’ve got a coat, but what about you? If you’ve been out with no more on than that-”
There was something about the way she smiled that wasn’t like anyone else. It had a quality which eluded him. Afterwards he thought that it was kindness.
She said,
“It was only to the bottom of the garden. There’s a wood there-I like to walk in it.”.
“In the dark?”
“Oh, yes. It’s so restful.”
… He knew then how tired she was. She was pale because she was tired. An extraordinary fierce anger sprang up in him. It left him astounded at himself, and with the feeling that what had started out as a momentary whim was about to turn, or had already turned, into a dangerous venture. He said nothing because there was nothing to say, unless he said too much. To have come here at all was an act of incredible folly. Or the wisest thing he had ever done in his life.
She looked at him, a little surprised, a little doubtful. The impression she had had of him when she opened the door was borne out now in the lighted room. Some of the bulk was accounted for by the heavy tweed coat, but there was breath and strength beyond the common. His features too were broad and strong and very deeply tanned under thick dark hair so closely cropped as almost to defeat a vigorous tendency to curl. Almost, but not quite. Dark eyes, dark eyebrows, and, at the moment, a dark angry look. She did not know how it was possible for her to have offended him, but it certainly seemed as if she must have done so. Yet she had only spoken of the room being cold- and of walking in the wood. Now why had she done that? The wood was her secret place, the only place where she could think her own thoughts and be alone. She did not know why she had spoken of it to Craig Lester, or why it should have angered him. Her thoughts showed in her face-doubt-a shade of timidity just touched by surprise. And then she was saying,
“You wanted to talk about Jenny. You said she wrote to you?”
The dark look vanished. Laughter sparkled in his eyes. She liked the way they crinkled at the corners.
“She sent us some of her work.”
“Oh-” The soft sound breathed dismay.
“She wrote-a very precise and grown-up letter. She didn’t say how old she was-after all, one doesn’t in a business letter. It was rather on the lines of, ‘Miss Jenny Maxwell presents her compliments to Messrs. Pethertons and begs to submit the enclosed manuscripts for their consideration’.”
Rosamond’s eyes widened, her lips twitched. She said,
“Oh dear!” And then, “That’s rather the way my aunt writes business letters. She is my great-aunt. She dictates to me. There was one a little while ago about a lease-the last bit sounds as if it had come out of that. She was writing to her solicitor, and she begged to submit it for his consideration.”
He threw back his head and laughed. She said at once in a tone of distress,
“You won’t laugh at Jenny-not when you see her, will you, Mr. Lester? She’s proud and sensitive, and her writing means a tremendous lot to her. It would upset her dreadfully if you were to laugh at it, and it’s bad for her to be upset. You see, she was in a very bad motor smash two years ago. At first they thought she would die, and when she didn’t, they thought she would never be able to walk again.”
He saw the muscles of her face tighten and the moisture come to her lashes. He began to speak, but she put out a hand to stop him.
“I don’t know why I said that-they don’t think so now. My aunt offered to take us in, and Jenny has got on so wonderfully here. She can walk a little now, and they say she is going to be perfectly all right, only she must have a quiet, regular life, and she has got to be kept happy. If she is worried or upset she slips back again, so she mustn’t be worried or upset. And the chief thing that keeps her happy is her writing. You see, it’s dull for her. There aren’t any other children, and if there were, she wouldn’t really be up to playing with them, but when she writes it’s like going into another life. She can make her own companions, and she can do all the things which she hasn’t been able to do since the accident. You don’t know how thankful I’ve been-” She broke off and looked at him, her colour risen, her eyes dark and bright with tears. “You won’t laugh at her, will you, or say anything to discourage her?”