Call and I'll Come

by Mary Burchell

  She turned her startled face to him, and a second later he had picked her up off the ground as though she were a child.

  “Do you want to get pneumonia?” He shook her slightly as he held her because he felt so angry and dismayed.

  “I was—only—opening the door for you,” she stammered, and he was suddenly conscious of an overwhelming quality of pathos in her thinness, as he held her rather tightly against him.

  “You silly little thing,” he said more gently, and he freed one hand to pull his heavy coat round her as he strode with her across the yard to an open doorway. “Hadn’t you got enough sense to put on a pair of shoes first?”

  She didn’t say anything and, glancing down at her he thought she looked sulky.

  “Well?” He was smiling a little now.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Oh yes, it does, young woman,” he said firmly, as he set her down gently just inside the doorway. “I’m not going to have your death on my conscience.”

  She didn’t say anything but just stood in the doorway watching him. Presently having stowed away the car, he came back.

  “May I come in this way?”

  She stood aside for him at once, and he saw that one door led into a stone-flagged kitchen and a short passage ended in the room where he had had his meal.

  “Well,” he paused for a moment—“hadn’t you better dry your feet and put on some shoes?”

  “I haven’t got any.” It was just a whisper.

  “You haven’t—What on earth do you mean by that?”

  “Just that.”

  “But you must.” He felt he had never heard of anything so ridiculous.

  “Can’t you mind your own business even a little?” It came like a blow, although the tone was so soft.

  “I—beg your pardon.” Roone felt terribly put out. He looked at the girl as she stood there, her eyes cast down. He thought then that even her motionless eyelids looked sullen, as he turned away with a shrug the idea did just strike him that they might have been heavy with unshed tears.

  Still, he plainly could not say any more about it. And so he went back into the room with the cosy fire and sat there for the rest of the evening, smoking and reading a book which he had with him.

  About half-past ten he decided to go to bed. There was not much else to do and in any case, he was genuinely tired. But it was the little woman not Anna, who took him upstairs to his clean bare bedroom under the pointed eaves. She seemed very anxious that he should not feel the various shortcomings of the place, but to Roone it was more amusing than otherwise that he should have to go to bed by candlelight.

  Presently he heard the girl come up to bed in the room next to his. The partition between the two rooms was so thin that after a minute or two he could identify the soft monotonous “swish-swish” as the sound of her brushing her hair.

  He fell to wondering what she looked like with that smoky cloud of hair framing her serious face and falling over her shoulders. It was ridiculous that she should exercise such a hold over his imagination and yet—the whole place was so curious that he felt it would always be stamped on his memory—This isolated house on the moors with the wind sighing round it and the snow whispering at the windows; the little frightened woman, who had nothing apparently to be afraid of; and then the girl with her abrupt answers and her eyes that hid so much.

  He didn’t know how long he had slept—not very long, he thought—when he started awake so violently that he was sitting up in bed with his heart thumping before he knew what had happened.

  There were heavy, uneven sounds going on downstairs like stumbling footsteps, and then the woman was speaking in a quiet urgent voice at the door of the room next to his:

  “Anna, Anna, he’s come home after all.”

  “All right, Mother. It’s all right. I’ll put on some clothes and come down.” The girl too, spoke in the same quiet tone with that tense note of urgency running through it.

  Roone lay down again and pulled the clothes round him. It was no business of his, and he had been well snubbed already this evening for interfering. All the same, he listened drowsily while the girl joined her mother, and the two went quietly down the creaking stairs.

  Almost immediately there was the sound of voices in some sort of dispute. There was a man’s voice—much louder than the other two—and then the concerted murmur of the woman’s voice and the girl’s.

  And then something jerked him quiveringly awake. Something which tore the last vestige of sleep from him. The sound of a woman’s screams, high and ragged in the murmuring quiet of the night. He sat up, his heart beating unpleasantly high in his throat.

  Confound it! Ought he to go down and interfere? The voices had dropped once more and there was an odd regularly repeated sound that he couldn’t quite identify. Then suddenly again, on a note of extreme terror came that scream. And in that moment of horrible revelation he knew what the sound was. The regular fall of a whip.

  In a second he was out of bed, dragging on his dressing-gown cursing as he fumbled for slippers in the pale snowy gleam from the window.

  He took the stairs three at a time, realising as he did so that it was from beyond the closed kitchen door that the sounds were coming.

  White with a rising tide of fury he tore open the door—and was suddenly the centre of the most melodramatic scene his well-ordered life had ever known.

  In the garish, unshaded light of the kitchen stood a huge crimson-faced man. One hand, twisted in her silky hair, held the girl almost still; the other rose and fell in that sickening measured rhythm as he flogged her with a heavy leather belt.

  Every bit of Roone’s considerable strength was behind the upper-cut which he loosed to the man’s jaw, and with a surge of sheer primitive joy he felt the bone crack under his knuckles.

  The falling belt caught him across the other wrist, but he was quite unconscious of the pain. All he realised was the fact that as the man went down like a log he dragged Anna with him by the strands of the hair he was still holding.

  Roone was kneeling beside her in a moment gently disentangling her hair, lifting her tenderly so that she was supported against him. Afterwards he was surprised to remember that all the time he was murmuring: “Oh, my child, my child, there’s blood on you.”

  “It’s all right.” She spoke at last in a hoarse little whisper. “But Mother—she was so frightened—the shock is so bad for her—”

  “It was your mother who screamed, then? I thought it was you.”

  “I wouldn’t scream,” she said indescribably, and for a moment he saw her bitten lips curve disdainfully. He suddenly found he wanted to kiss her thin brown face, to cuddle her up like a child against him and to murmur the sympathy which she refused to ask.

  But sanity was beginning to return, and he looked up quickly.

  The man was lying there breathing heavily and muttering. Drink and the well-directed blow would keep him quiet for a little while. And the woman—

  He looked round and saw she was lying very quietly in a chair, her head fallen a little to one side. Fainted, of course, poor little devil, he thought quickly. But even as he formed the idea another unaccountable suspicion set his heart knocking against his ribs.

  With an instinctive movement he gathered up Anna so that she could not see her mother, and got to his feet still holding her.

  “I’m going to take you into the other room,” he said.

  “Mother—” she began.

  “I’ll come back and see to your mother as soon as I’ve settled you comfortably.” He spoke gently, but with unmistakable authority, and when she found her slight movement of protest was nothing against the quiet strength of his arms she gave in.

  He carried her into the next room and laid her gently on the wide, old-fashioned sofa which he wheeled up near the fire. A few coals were still glowing there, and he quickly raked them together and added some more.

  She watched him silently and then whispered impatiently, “Now,
Mother.”

  “Yes,” He bent over her kindly for a moment. “You’ll be all right?”

  She nodded and he turned away and went back to the kitchen with an oddly sinking heart.

  As he entered, he saw that the man was on his feet again. He stood in the open doorway leading to the yard swaying a little and holding on to the jamb of the door. He measured Roone for a moment with a sullen eye, but he was in no mood to fight anyone who could hit so hard.

  “I’ll have the police on you,” he told Roone thickly. “Assaulting a man in his own house. It’s a police job.”

  “Yes, you’re right, it’s a police job,” agreed Roone grimly. “But it’s to you they’ll want to talk, not to me.”

  He made a quick move across the kitchen, but the man, for all his unsteadiness, was quicker. He banged the door to, and almost before Roone had wrenched it open again there was a sound of a horse and cart crunching along the snowy path and out into the road beyond.

  Roone’s first impulse was to run after the fellow, but the next moment he realised the absurdity of that. Even if he had been dressed for a chase through the snow he would have been outdistanced in a few seconds.

  Closing the door, he turned to the silent figure in the chair and, even before he touched her he knew that his first faint suspicion was a horrible certainty. There would never be any thing else for her to be afraid of again.

  As he bent over her, trying uselessly, as he knew, to find the faintest spark of life the girl called softly from the next room.

  “All right, I’m coming.” He managed somehow to keep his agitation out of his voice and he hoped he didn’t look too grim and pale when he went back to reassure her.

  She seemed less faint and dazed now, and her eyes searched his face anxiously as he came across the room to her.

  “Where is the nearest doctor?” he asked abruptly.

  “For my mother?” she countered sharply.

  “For both of you.” His voice was cool and determinedly matter-of-fact, but he was thinking. “Poor child, how am I going to tell her?”

  “I don’t need a doctor.” That was sulky again.

  “Don’t be silly,” he said gently. “Is there any one anywhere near here?”

  “Three miles away. Is she fainting still? I must go to her.”

  “No, you can’t do anything.” He caught her gently as she tried to struggle off the sofa, and firmly put her back.

  “What do you mean?—I can’t do anything?” Her eyes were suddenly wide with frightened suspicion.

  “Just that.” He made that sound very cool and impersonal. “There’s nothing useful you could do if you went.”

  “Why not?” There was resentment and hostility in every line of her.

  “Well, I can do anything that is necessary, and you”—he cleared his throat—“you must lie still and be a good girl.”

  “She’d want me to go. She’ll need me.”

  “No, she doesn’t need you.”

  There was a long moment’s silence, while he watched the resentment die out of her eyes. Then with an odd little movement he never forgot, she put up her thin hands and stroked them nervously up and down his arms.

  “I’m sorry,” she said very quietly. “I’m making it terribly hard for you to tell me.”

  “What do you mean?” He stammered a little, feeling desperately inadequate.

  “She’s dead, isn’t she?” Her voice again held that oddly resigned, almost laconic note which Roone found far more pathetic than tears.

  He dropped his eyes before her unwavering glance, and was terribly moved to feel her pat his arm absently as though it were he who needed comforting.

  Quite naturally he put his arms gently round her. “I wish I could have told you less clumsily,” he said. But she shook her head.

  “That part doesn’t matter. It’s scarcely a surprise, really. I knew she couldn’t stand any strain like that—that scene.”

  “Is there any one near whom I can send for a doctor?” Roone looked very troubled. He couldn’t leave her here all alone with the possibility of that brute coming back; yet to take her out in an open car in this snowstorm would be enough to kill her after the shock she had had.

  She shook her head again. “A boy comes with milk about half-past six. You can send a message by him.”

  Roone nodded. She looked at him with a little air of timid appeal, and he drew her gently against him at once and said: “What is it, my dear?”

  “You’re quite sure about—about—”

  He felt his heart ache. “I wish I could say anything else, but I’m absolutely certain.”

  “Please” she said with terrible urgency, “I must know for myself. Oh, do understand.”

  He gathered her up without a word and carried her back into the kitchen.

  Afterwards, he thought the saddest thing he had ever had to do was to convince that tragic tearless child that her mother was really dead. But at the time it just seemed a natural part of the incredible night.

  Then presently he carried Anna back to the other room, and fetched warm water and bathed her hurt shoulders for her. And as she sat there drooping slightly, with her hair swept forward over one shoulder, he thought she was the loveliest thing he had ever seen.

  He touched her with the clumsy tenderness of the totally inexperienced and was curiously thrilled by the feel of her warm golden skin. He had never had to do anything so intimate for any girl before. If his sister had—quite inconceivably—been hurt, there would inevitably have been some kind of person who would do the correct thing—or have the correct thing done for her—in the middle of the Sahara Desert.

  But this suspicious waif—helpless now but still, he knew, on the defensive—knew nothing and cared less for whatever the correct thing might be.

  He felt his heart warm to her for her very difference from anything in his conventional well-ordered life. In the language of his own womenfolk, he knew, she was entirely impossible, but she moved him and intrigued him like nothing else he had ever known.

  “Is that better?” He had done some awkward bandaging.

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “Would you like me to carry you up to your bedroom?”

  “Oh no—please.” Her voice was eager. “Let me stay here.”

  He gave in at once and made her as comfortable as he could on the sofa.

  “Y-you’re not going to leave me?” She stammered a little, and started up nervously as he turned to go upstairs to get blankets.

  “No, no, I’m just going to get something to keep you warm.” He realised suddenly that her unnatural calm hid acute fear as well as grief.

  When he came down she was lying looking into the fire so gravely and sadly that after he had tucked the blankets round her, he said ridiculously: “Would you like to have my hand to hold?”

  But she had retreated again into the deep recesses of her own reserve and she shook her head, and looked so surprised that he felt it had been thoroughly foolish to make the offer.

  He made up the fire and sat down in an armchair to pass the rest of the night as best he could. If the girl insisted on wrapping herself away in that impenetrable reserve there was little he could do for her; he would only make her suspicious and shy again if he tried.

  Then he looked at her and saw that though her eyes were closed, big tears were creeping down under her lashes and trickling unheeded down her thin cheeks.

  “Anna,” he said softly, using her name quite naturally.

  She opened her eyes and he thought she looked like some stricken little animal that was afraid to die alone but even more afraid to ask for help.

  With an exclamation of pity he leaned forward suddenly and gathered her up in his arms, blanket and all. He lifted her on to his knee and cuddled her down against him like a child. And as she lay there sobbing quietly, he put his cheek against her silky dark hair and knew somehow that, though no word was spoken, she was comforted.

  Presently the sobbing stopped, and he
saw that she was gazing thoughtfully into the fire again as though trying to see a little way ahead of her troubled life. But her face looked more tranquil, and glancing down at her still bare feet, he saw that she was curling her toes childishly in the warmth from the fire. “Feet feel a bit warmer now?” he asked kindly.

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “They’re such pretty feet, you ought to treat them a bit more kindly,” he told her. “Not run around barefoot.”

  She was silent for a moment and then said in a whisper: “He took my shoes away, you know.”

  “What do you mean?” Roone bent his head to catch her words.

  “He took them so that I couldn’t run away. He was furious with me about something this morning, and he said he’d punish me tonight, and he took all my shoes so that I couldn’t run away.”

  Roone muttered something and felt again the rush of primitive rage he had experienced when he knocked that scoundrel down.

  “You poor child! I wish I’d broken his jaw instead of just bruising it.”

  “I’m not a child, you know,” she said seriously. “I’m twenty.”

  “Are you?” Roone smiled. “That’s a great age.”

  She looked at him doubtfully and he saw that faint hint of a smile again.

  “Well, you’re younger than my sister,” he told her, feeling that Katherine was a suitable topic to bring into this extraordinary scene.

  “Am I? How old is she?”

  “Twenty-seven.” He wondered a little if Katherine would have minded his saying that. “And her name’s Katherine.”

  “Is she pretty?”

  “Yes, very. At least, I think so.”

  “Are you very fond of her?”

  Roone felt amused at this solemn catechism.

  “Of course,” he said. “There are just the two of us, you see, and we’ve always been a good deal together.”

  “Haven’t you any mother or father ?”

  “Oh yes, there’s my father. My mother died before I can remember much, and my aunt has always run the home for us.”

  She was silent for a while, and then said unexpectedly: “Are you very rich?”