Listen for the Whisperer

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  Irene Varos had been standing by silently, her dark eyes concerned, as though she too weighed and judged me. I sensed a certain guardianship, a single-minded protection toward Laura which had grown out of long years of companionship and trust between them. If Irene opposed me, I might be in for trouble.

  “Will you help me?” I said, turning to her directly. It was as if I willed her to remember the secret of my identity that had not yet been spoken. I wanted to remind Irene that I was Laura Worth’s daughter. I wanted her to think that because I was her daughter, I might bring her something of comfort and rejuvenation which nothing else could supply. It would be the natural thing for her to expect.

  “It may be difficult to bring Miss Worth out every day,” Irene said doubtfully. Her words carried only a trace of accent in the intonation. Apparently her long association with Laura, her years away from her own country had given her a comfortable mastery of English.

  Laura looked at her directly. “I wasn’t planning to leave the house every day in order to have meetings with Miss Thomas. I would prefer to return to my house in town, and have her visit me there.”

  “Dr. Fletcher—” Irene began hesitantly, but Laura suddenly clapped her hands with an air of youthful decision.

  “No—better still!—Miss Thomas shall come to stay at the house! I’ve not had a house guest for a long while. We can work more sensibly there. Miss Thomas, I have a room filled with memorabilia. At the house I can show you everything. I can tell you stories that you could never hear anywhere else. I can even show you my beginnings, since I was born in that house.”

  “Bravo!” Gunnar cried. “It is a perfect solution.”

  Irene remained doubtful, not entirely convinced. “We have no guest room,” she reminded Laura. “Mrs. Jaffe is staying in the room we used for guests.”

  Laura’s great dark eyes were alive with purpose and amusement. “There’s a possible solution. It can be arranged. We’ll talk about it later. Will you come, Miss Thomas?”

  “Of course,” I said promptly. I could scarcely have asked for anything better.

  Irene gave in. “If this is what you wish. But Dr. Fletcher has told us that he is against publicity of any sort, and he will not permit this. He will be angry as it is, when he learns about today’s meeting.”

  Laura stood away from the wall, drawing herself up so that she seemed taller than she was.

  “You mustn’t worry about Miles, Irene. If I say that Miss Thomas is to visit me, then I’m sure he will indulge me. After all, it’s my well-being that concerns him.”

  “Yesterday—” Irene began doubtfully.

  “Yesterday I didn’t care. Yesterday I’d given up. But thanks to my good friend here”—she smiled at Gunnar, and her beautiful ravaged face seemed almost gay—“and thanks to this young lady, I am alive again.”

  She turned to me swiftly so that her back was toward the others and she faced me alone. The look of gaiety was instantly gone. Her eyes seemed to flash a message of entreaty that took me by surprise.

  “You will come?” she said. “Please come, even if there are difficulties. I’ll arrange everything. I can do it if you are there. I can find the strength.”

  It was as if she begged me for something, signaled some special need to me. She wanted me in that house. She wanted me for reasons she might not have confided to Gunnar and Irene. I sensed the urgency in her, and something strangely close to fear.

  “I’ve said I’ll come,” I told her. “I’m not afraid of difficulties, so long as you want me there and will give me what I ask for.”

  With a quick gesture she put her hands on my shoulders and kissed me lightly on the cheek. I stepped back as sharply as though she had slapped me, but fortunately she did not notice. She had already whirled to face the other two.

  “We must go home at once,” she said to Irene. “We must make the house ready for a guest. Tomorrow Miss Thomas will come. No—let her come this afternoon. There must be no delay!”

  Delay would defeat her, I thought. She was carrying this off on a wave of nervous energy. By nighttime she might collapse. I suspected that Irene Varos thought that too, and that part of her reluctance to carry out this plan grew from the knowledge that Laura’s strength was ephemeral at best.

  “I’m sure Gunnar will bring me at whatever hour you wish,” I agreed, and turned to him questioningly.

  “Of course,” he said. “I am at your service, Laura. I am delighted that you will make this effort. You are already looking better than you have in months.”

  She was obviously pleased by his words, and he was the next to be swiftly kissed on the cheek. He held her affectionately for a moment, and then she turned back to me.

  “It’s settled, then. I shall look forward to our visits. And I must know more about you. This isn’t to be altogether one-sided.”

  I smiled and took her hand, thanking her. In the end it would not be one-sided. There were surprises that I had in store for her, and now that I was to be allowed past her guardians, I would be able to deliver them. Though first I would be the writer. The rest could come later.

  By the time she and Irene started down the path together, her energy had begun to flag a little. The other woman took her arm as they descended the path, though Laura still kept her head high, the gallant lift of her chin that I had seen so many times on the screen still evident.

  We watched them go without speaking. When I finally looked at Gunnar I found his eyes upon me.

  “You carried it off very well,” he said. “You kept a rein on your own emotions.”

  I had, indeed, but in spite of my father’s letter, I did not think he fully guessed what those emotions were.

  “If you can stay a little,” he went on, “there is something I would like to show you here.”

  He was still looking at me with that studying gaze which probed and went deeper than I wanted it to. For my eventual purpose, it might be better if I saw as little as possible of Gunnar Thoresen.

  “I’ve nothing to do,” I said. “But what about you? Haven’t I already cut badly into your working day? Perhaps you shouldn’t call for me this afternoon. I can manage easily by taxi.”

  He started toward the gate to the enclosure and I went with him. “There is nothing pressing at the office that needs my attention at the moment. The letter from your father has made you my responsibility. It is possible I will take a few days off while you are here.”

  He sounded as though it was a responsibility he didn’t altogether welcome, but would carry out because it was his duty. I wondered again about that letter, and exactly what Victor Hollins might have told him about me.

  “I don’t want to be anyone’s responsibility,” I assured him.

  His smile was as grave as ever. “Perhaps you have no choice in the matter. Perhaps this is something between Victor Hollins and me.”

  We crossed the path by which we had climbed to the plateau of the church, and I went with him. His words disturbed me, but I had no quick answer for him as we started up the small hill that rose opposite the enclosure. A well-trodden trail wound upward, leading away from the rocky face to which moss gave a touch of green.

  “I want to show you one of my favorite spots,” he said.

  The path mounted in hairpin turns and finally wound behind the hill to mount it from the rear. At the top was a bare brown clearing, circled by trees. We could look down between straight gray trunks toward the church. It seemed to me like a tall-masted ship—a black pirate ship sailing against a blue sky. Inside there would be sanctity, and I had a feeling that the evils of the world had come up against that grim outer armor, never to penetrate, to be defeated against those black shingles. Yet it seemed that the building was somehow a focal point of attraction. Was that because good must always attract evil?

  “From the other side you can see a bit of Bergen and the mountains that guard it to the south,” Gunnar said. “A splendid view.”

  I turned obediently to admire the scene. Nearer
at hand there was a lake, a few houses, and farther away those ubiquitous arms of the sea that thrust into the coast in fjords everywhere. The immediate quiet was so intense that distant voices reached us, and a dog rustling through underbrush far down the hill made an explosive sound in dead leaves. I could see his master lying upon an outcropping of rock, stripped to the waist to soak in the warming rays of the sun.

  Gunnar smiled. “We have a mystique about health and sun and the outdoors, you know. Whenever the sun is bright you will find Norwegians drinking it in. We build our houses to receive it. Perhaps that is our natural reaction to long dark winters.”

  I looked again at the church, imagining how it would stand dreary in black winter rain, with the sky dark overhead. On such a day it would need to be bright and holy within. I shivered, as Laura had done, and clasped my arms about me. I don’t know whether I believe in premonition or not. Perhaps one can always color any happening in the light of after knowledge. But it seemed to me that this place promised me something from the first that was dark and ominous and threatening.

  Gunnar drew me back to the present. “What do you think of Laura Worth? You guarded yourself well, but I wondered what you were feeling.”

  “I had no feeling that I was her daughter, if that’s what you mean,” I said. “I had no sense of inner recognition.” That had come yesterday, but I would not tell him so. “I wasn’t acting any part. I was being what I am—a writer with a chance to do a rare interview that I must give everything to.”

  “It is a good thing that you are going to the house this afternoon. Now you will have the chance to tell her the truth. That you are Victor’s daughter—and hers. You will have won her confidence a little first, and that will be in your favor.”

  “Tell her? At once?” I knew I sounded alarmed. “But if she knows, she’s likely to be angry and turn me away.”

  “You cannot be sure of that. There are several reasons why you must tell her as soon as possible. You cannot in good conscience stay in her house without telling her the truth. Otherwise, I too shall feel that I am misleading my old friend. You cannot expect Irene, who is also her friend, to keep the truth from her indefinitely. And there is, of course, the matter of Dr. Fletcher, who knows who you are.”

  I had already been worrying about Miles Fletcher and his visit to the hotel yesterday. If he got to her first and heard about this plan to have me stay in the house, if he told her of my identity before I could—everything might collapse.

  “Yes, I must tell her,” I agreed. “I’d thought I might get my interview first. It’s likely that she would talk more frankly to a stranger than to her own daughter.”

  “Not necessarily. It may mean a great deal more to her if the admiration you feel for her work comes also from someone who is of her own blood. Possibly you will find that you can give her more than mere admiration.”

  I turned from his searching look, lest I let him see too much. I could not change my own inner feelings. They rose from too fundamental a cause.

  “One thing you have already brought her that she has not had for many years,” he said gently. “You have given her appreciation for her work, Leigh, and word that she is not forgotten. This may prove the breath of life to her. Once she lived on the world’s adulation, as a woman like Laura must. She has starved for a very long time.”

  “Then why did she give it all up? Why did she run away?”

  “As I understand it, there was no place for her. Her studio was afraid of the scandal. No one would touch her then. But times have changed, you know.”

  “She could have fought that,” I said. “Others have. The stage wouldn’t have barred her. Or she could have gone abroad and acted. She never tried. She ran away. Why?”

  Gunnar shook his head gravely. “I have no idea. She never talks about what happened. I believe she has talked to some extent to Irene, who will never betray her confidence. But she will not discuss these things with anyone else.”

  “And now she’s married this man who belongs to that time,” I said. “This seems a strange thing to do.”

  “She is a complex person. It is not a simple thing to understand what motivates her.”

  If I got my interview, I might probe a little, I thought. There were questions I would ask her. Whether she would answer or not was another matter.

  “I will take you back to the hotel now,” Gunnar said. “Suppose I call for you this afternoon around two o’clock?”

  “And if Dr. Fletcher gets home before that?”

  “Irene believes he will be out all afternoon. And he thinks Laura is at the cottage. Of course there is the sister. She is an odd person. There is no telling what she may do, or how much she knows about you. We’ll have to take that chance. If you find that Laura has been told the truth before your arrival, then—” He shrugged helplessly.

  “Then—I will play it by ear,” I said, quoting him.

  He did not smile. “Yes. I should think you are rather good at that.”

  We started down the hill together, and I pondered his meaning. Was there an intended sting? I found I did not want Gunnar Thoresen to think ill of me—as he was likely to do before this affair of Laura Worth was over. But there was nothing I could do about that, one way or another, and I said no more on the way to the car.

  He was silent as well on our return drive to Bergen. Now and then he would point out some interesting sight. And I managed to ask him about Kalfaret, the district in which Laura’s house was situated.

  “The word means Calvary,” he said. “In the early 1900’s a number of well-to-do Bergen families settled there, building the sturdy, rather attractive houses you see there today. This was the fine residential section of the city, near enough to downtown to be convenient, but far enough up the hill to have marvelous views.”

  “I wish I could find myself here,” I said. “Nothing in Norway speaks to me. It’s all interesting, but strange. I keep feeling there should be something more.”

  He glanced sideways at me, then quickly ahead at the road. “Perhaps you have spent too much time stifling your own feelings. Perhaps you have done a dangerous thing in refusing to feel—except in one direction.”

  “What do you mean—in one direction?” I asked uneasily.

  “It is possible to give oneself as much to hating as to loving. Is that not so?”

  I could feel the flush mounting into my face. I was suddenly angry with him. And with myself and my father and Laura. And I was hurt as well. It was not my fault that I felt as I did. The damage had been done to me, after all. I was not to blame.

  “What did my father say in his letter to you?” I asked coolly.

  His own voice had an equal coolness when he answered. “I do not think I will tell you. At any rate, not just now.”

  Tears burned my eyes. I might have known that my father would betray me. Undoubtedly for my own good—as he would have thought. But I felt miserably betrayed, nevertheless. Betrayed and hurt and wounded. It wasn’t true that I couldn’t feel. I was lacerated by pain, and the man beside me knew it.

  Unexpectedly, he reached over with one hand and covered my own where it lay in my lap. He squeezed my hand briefly and let it go. I did not want it to be so, but his touch was comforting. He needed to speak no words. His touch told me that he did not condemn me for whatever I was feeling, and he would let me be and let me get over it. Nevertheless, I knew that he had silently set himself in opposition to the emotions which drove me, and I dared not accept him fully as a friend.

  Neither of us spoke until we were back in Ole Bull’s Plass before the hotel, and by that time I had myself more firmly in hand. I thanked him and told him I would be ready at two o’clock. As I turned away, his eyes were grave.

  “You are very young, Leigh,” he said. “This, inevitably, will be cured,”—thus dealing me the final wound.

  I fled from him through the revolving doors into the lobby. The lift was unbearably slow in getting me upstairs, but at least I had the car to myself.
I unlocked my door with a hand that shook, and bolted into the room, closing it behind me, turning the lock. In a moment I had tossed my coat and handbag into a chair and cast myself full length upon the bed, to burst into stormy tears.

  Young! I had never been young as other girls were young. You matured very fast when you knew you had a mother who didn’t want you—who only wanted to be famous and rich and successful. It was not youth I suffered from—but a too early maturing. I’d had to face my life as it was, as it must be, long ago. How little Gunnar Thoresen knew about me. As little as Victor Hollins had known. Whatever my father had written in his letter to Gunnar, it had not given him the truth. It had been a betrayal of me and all that I felt most deeply.

  Once my father had told me that love was the most important thing in the world. I knew about love. I had loved him dearly, and I loved Ruth. But he had meant the love between a man and a woman—the damaging sort of love that brought happiness to no one. I had never yet slept with a man, but I was quite sure that I would make that choice if it appealed to me, before I would fall in love. I had only to look at how Victor had suffered. And Ruth too. To say nothing of myself—all because my father had fallen foolishly in love with a woman like Laura Worth. She in turn had apparently had many loves—and had not been happy for it.

  My weeping quieted as I clarified my own resolve, my own feelings. What could Gunnar Thoresen know out of that cold Norwegian reserve of his? How had he dared tell me that I might have stifled my own ability to feel?—and how wrong he had been! I was feeling now, stormily, painfully, in a way he was probably not capable of.

  After a while my thoughts stopped churning. I must bathe my face and go downstairs and get something to eat. I needed to be strong for the ordeal ahead of me. It was not an ordeal I altogether dreaded. The storm that had wracked me had in a sense prepared me for battle. I was glad that I could feel nothing toward Laura Worth when it came to her being my mother. I wanted to keep my anger pure and clear so that it could burn free when I needed it.

  There was one thing that still troubled me. Why was Gunnar Thoresen willing to let me get anywhere near Laura Worth if my father had told him how I felt about her? Why was he willing to take this risk, since it was undoubtedly in my power to wound and hurt Laura as he must not want to see her wounded or hurt?