Call and I'll Come

by Mary Burchell

  Mr. Roone flew to Paris.

  “Ready? I am sorry to have been so long.” It was Manora speaking from the doorway.

  Anna raised her head. She looked a little dazed and as though she didn’t see Manora very clearly.

  “Do you remember,” she said a little huskily, “the date of the night I first sang in Paris?”

  “The date?” Manora wrinkled her forehead. “No, I have forgotten.”

  “Well, think, Manora, think! We must remember!” Anna got up, crushing the newspaper together in her hands.

  “What is it, my dear?” Manora came forward in quick concern.

  “Nothing.” Anna brushed her hand across her eyes. “Only do remember. I don’t seem able to think at all.”

  “Wait. I can tell you exactly.” Manora was triumphant. “Was just five days before Conrad’s birthday.”

  “Was it?” Anna still looked a little bewildered. “Whatever made you remember that?”

  “Because he was forty-five and he say to me that it is a nice present to find a new singer just before his fortieth birthday.” Manora smiled indulgently. “And I think, ‘He takes off one year for each day.’ ” She was perfectly serious now as she counted rapidly on her fingers; and Anna watched her with wide, anxious eyes.

  “The fourth,” announced Manora. “Was the night of the fourth of December! Why?”

  “Oh!” Anna gave a funny little cry, and ran to the door. “Bring me a time-table quickly,” she called to a passing servant. “I’m leaving for London today.”

  “Anna!” Manora stared at her in bewilderment. “Are you crazy?”

  “No.” Anna caught both Manora’s hands. “Listen. It’s about my husband.” It seemed so natural suddenly to be calling him that. So dear and natural. “He’s in terrible trouble. They think he has stolen money or something. Of course he hasn’t, but I must go to him. You see, don’t you, that I must go?”

  “But, Anna—”

  “It isn’t any good,” Anna broke in fiercely. “There aren’t any arguments that matter, Manora. I love him and he just may need me a little. I must go. If Schreiner were in trouble and you were on the other side of the world even, you would go to him, wouldn’t you?—wouldn't you?”

  Manora nodded.

  “Well, this is the same. Nothing on earth would keep me here. He came to me in Paris that time because he thought I might need him. He thought I might be—a failure—” She stopped, biting her lip, as she remembered Tony, awkward, boyishly embarrassed, trying to explain his impulse. Such an utterly crazy impulse, considering the construction that must be put upon it.

  “I will speak to Conrad. I think perhaps I make him understand.”

  Darling Manora, who always understood, herself!

  “Yes, make him understand. Please, Manora.” Anna gripped her hands together in nervous agitation. “He won’t mind if you tell him. He’ll do anything in the world for you.”

  “Most things,” amended Manora mechanically. “But when will you come back? They expect that you sing in Monte Carlo, remember, in a fortnight.”

  “Yes.” Anna was only half attending, for the servant had brought the time-table now, and she was quickly flicking over the pages. “Monte Carlo? Yes, I will if I can. Otherwise they must find another singer.”

  Manora looked as though she were going to say something else. Then suddenly changing her mind, she turned and went out of the room, only pausing at the door to say: “I explain to Conrad. You do not need to worry.”

  Anna never knew quite what arguments Manora used, but they must have had their due effect, for, by the time she had looked up planes and packed the last of her baggage, Schreiner had somehow been persuaded to view her immediate departure quite calmly.

  “The husband, I hope, will not need you for long,” he remarked as his only form of protest.

  “Don’t say that.” Anna’s eyes were suddenly bright with tears. “I wish he could need me for always.”

  Schreiner didn’t answer that, but he, as well as Manora, came to the airport to see her off.

  For a moment Anna clung to Manora, keenly aware of how dear she had grown. She wished she could have framed some sort of thanks to them for all they had done, but the words couldn’t get past the lump in her throat.

  And then, all at once, it came to her that there was something they had always longed to have put into words—something that a scornful, smiling curious world would never say.

  She stretched out one hand to Schreiner and still held tightly to Manora with the other.

  “I can’t say the things I ought to say,” she told them, “because I shall weep if I try. But I want you to know this: you have rebuilt everything for me, you two—my confidence and my faith, and the power to go on living. It isn’t only that you have been so kind. It’s the wonderful experience of living near anything so touchingly beautiful and so good as your love for each other. It’s the kind of simple revelation that makes one believe in God.”

  It was the longest speech she had ever made to them, and neither of them said a word in reply. Then she kissed them both, as they stood there wordless, and walked to the plane.

  An hour later Anna reached London. And as she drove from Heathrow she thought a little wonderingly of that first time she had come into London, and how much she had changed since then.

  The Anna of a year ago seemed like another person—timid, unsure, and shrinkingly resentful. Well, she was still timid, still desperately unsure of herself at times, but she knew now how to hide all that. In the careless, uncritical company of Schreiner and Manora she had learned, quite painlessly—not how to suppress her feelings—but how to shelter them from critical, unfriendly eyes.

  And in that knowledge lay a certain measure of defence. Never again would she have to face the world unarmed, unknowing, at the mercy of people like Katherine. She felt overwhelmingly sorry for the poor, silly little creature who had been herself, for now she could even think of Katherine without those familiar tremors of fear—or nearly so.

  She drove straight to Eaton Square, for that seemed to be the only place where she would be likely to get definite news. Tony’s office was probably closed. She had only the vaguest idea of what happened in these cases. For all she knew, he might be in prison, although Manora—who always seemed to know at least a little about everything—had said that he was almost sure to have been allowed bail.

  Anna shuddered a little. The expression was so terribly sordid and incongruous, used in connection with the Tony she knew.

  She paid off the taxi, and went up the short flight of well-remembered steps. It didn’t seem so long now since she had been here, and her breath was beginning to come uncomfortably fast.

  It was a strange servant who opened the door to her. Somehow that made things easier.

  “Can I see Mr. Roone, please?” she said. “Mr. Hamilton Roone, I mean.”

  She thought the servant looked very slightly put out. But perhaps that was just her imagination—and, in any case, the look was gone in a moment.

  “I’m sorry, madam,” he said quite civilly. “Mr. Roone is not here.”

  “You mean he’s not in?”

  Another almost imperceptible pause.

  “He is not living here just now, madam. Would you like to speak to Miss Roone—Miss Katherine Roone? She is in.”

  Katherine! She had thought she was no longer afraid of Katherine. She knew now, from the sickening lurch of her heart, that she was. But this was her only way of finding Tony. She hesitated only a second:

  “Yes, please, I should like to see Miss Roone.”

  She came into the big panelled hall—the hall where Mario had kissed her that memorable night. It helped a little to think about Mario just now.

  “Who shall I say it is, madam?”

  “Tell her—Mrs. Roone,” Anna said quietly. “Mrs. Hamilton Roone.”

  The servant went away into the library, but returned almost immediately with the request that she would come in.

&nbs
p; Katherine was standing by the fire when she entered the room—calm, unsmiling, and completely unwelcoming.

  “Well, Anna,” she said, without even suggesting that they should sit down, “what is it you want?”

  “I want to see Tony.” Anna was surprised that her newly acquired poise crumpled at once, and that she sounded truculent and scared.

  “I’m afraid I can’t help you,” Katherine said coldly.

  “But where is he? The servant said he wasn’t here. You don’t mean he is in—prison?”

  “No.” Katherine’s mouth grew a little thinner. “I believe he was allowed bail.”

  “You believe he was! What do you mean? Don’t you know where he is?”

  “No.”

  “But Anna’s voice failed for a moment in her dismay. Then she found it again: “Won’t you please explain? I’m sorry to seem so stupid, but I don’t understand.”

  Katherine turned away a little gesture of impatience.

  “I suppose you heard how he’d been embezzling—using his clients’ money.”

  And then all Anna’s nervousness went up in a blaze of anger. She leaned forward, catching Katherine by the arm and whirling her round.

  “Do you mean—you can’t mean—that you believe he did it!”

  Katherine tried angrily to shake her arm free.

  “Unfortunately the evidence is overwhelming,” she said shortly. “The shock and the disgrace made my father ill. There really wasn’t anything for Hamilton to do but leave the house. It was bad enough having the newspapers drag our name through the mud, without having him here as a perpetual reminder.”

  Anna fell away from her, pale and aghast.

  “You—contemptible—bitch!” she said slowly. And she thought quite dispassionately: “I’m glad I slapped her face that time. I know it was vulgar. But I only wish I’d hit harder.”

  Katherine coloured very faintly. “I don’t think you help matters by that sort of abuse.”

  It was true, of course. Anna made a great effort to control herself again.

  “But you’re condemning him even before the court does!”

  “What has that to do with it?” Katherine’s voice was sharp with impatience. “The court proceedings are only a formality. We know. He’s just a common swindler. Do you think I like having to say that of my own brother?”

  Anna stared at her and said quietly: “You do know, don’t you, that Tony would have stood by you if you’d committed murder?”

  Katherine shrugged. “But I’m never likely to need such championship,” she pointed out dryly.

  “Katherine, don’t you love Tony?” Anna was speaking quite gently, and neither of them realised the curious fact that it was she now who pitied Katherine for her ignorance.

  “Of course I love him—or I did. He’s my brother.” Katherine spoke as though she didn’t want to answer, but could not quite help it. “But when something like this happens it spoils everything that has gone before. You can’t realise, I expect, how proud we were of Tony.” The words came out with difficulty. “And now he is nothing but a disgrace to us. He just isn’t what we always thought him. He’s someone else. But I don’t expect you understand.”

  “Yes, I think I do,” Anna said slowly. And, as she listened to the quiet bitterness of Katherine’s short sentences, she did understand.

  Tony had not been a real individual to his family at all—someone to be loved or hated or ignored. He had just been a wonderful asset. Something that counted when they reckoned up what a marvellous family they were. His looks and his charm and his popularity had always added to their pleasant sense of superiority. Now, his need, his unhappiness, and his possible disgrace, weighed down the other side of the balance.

  All Katherine’s little bright world of pride and pretensions was broken up and, because appearances were all that had ever mattered to her, she had nothing left. For appearances you were miserably dependent on other people—and if they failed you that was the end.

  “I’m sorry, Katherine,” Anna said, and, in a way, it was true. “I’m sorry you should feel so wretched and bitter about things. You’re quite right—I can’t feel that way myself. It doesn’t really matter to me whether Tony is a swindler or a murderer, or a coward or a hero. He’s simply the man I love. And I must go to him, just in case he needs me.”

  Katherine was quite herself again by now. She said contemptuously: “I should scarcely think he would need you to complicate things for him. But if you insist on going, that is your own affair. His solicitors can tell you where to find him. They are Bury & Winterton, and you’ll find their address in the telephone-book.”

  “Thank you,” Anna said. “And good-bye, Katherine.”

  She went out of the room and out of the house, closing the heavy front door quietly behind her as she had that other time. And as she did so she thought: “And it was because I thought these people loved and understood Tony that I deliberately broke my heart into little pieces.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The solicitor’s office was not difficult to find. An incredibly quiet place in an incredibly quiet square. The sound of a typewriter from an open window opposite seemed like the cackle of distant musketry in the overwhelming stillness—a fitting background to the slow, measured, “booming” of Mr. Bury’s bass baritone in the room itself.

  She explained that all she wanted was Tony’s address. She had no intention of actually discussing the case at the moment.

  Mr. Bury’s eyebrows rose, and she gathered that neither had he any such intention—certainly not before she had furnished something like documentary evidence of her identity. He accepted her statement that she was Tony’s wife with courtesy, but as though he reserved final judgment until he had received additional proof.

  However, apparently the evidence was slightly in her favour, because he eventually gave her the address of the little private hotel in Kensington where Tony was living.

  Outside in the taxi once more, driving westward, she leaned forward, staring out of the window, but not seeing much of the passing streets.

  She knew she was sitting unnecessarily still and rigid, but she had an idea that if she relaxed at all she would find herself trembling violently.

  Not that she was afraid. Even the odd fluttering of her heart was not fear. It was just—she was going to Tony at last. Going to him, not because she needed him or had any plea to make, but because he was in need, and she could possibly help him.

  Fifteen minutes more. Ten minutes more. Five minutes more—and she would be with him...

  Suddenly her breath caught in her throat. The outlines of the passing people wavered and became blurred. She closed her eyes tightly to keep back a quick rush of tears.

  She mustn’t cry now—for she was going to see Tony.

  He was in, it appeared, when she inquired for him. She was Mrs. Roone? Would she go straight up? It was the door directly in front of her on the first floor.

  She went up.

  Tony said “Come in” the moment she knocked, but she hesitated a moment in a sort of panic, so that he called again, impatiently, “Come in.”

  She turned the handle and went in, closing the door behind her.

  “Yes?” Tony said absently, without looking up from the desk by the window.

  She didn’t know what to say, and, at the silence, he turned sharply and looked across at her.

  “Anna!”

  She was beside him in a second, even before he could rise from his chair. She saw then how changed he was. The smile was gone from his grey eyes, and his mouth was grim instead of boyish.

  “Why, Tony dear,” she said, and very gently she put her hands round his face.

  “Don’t do that.” He quickly put up his own hands and took hers away, but he kissed first one palm and then the other before he let her go.

  “Don’t you like me to touch you?”

  He gave a short little laugh at that. “Yes. But it’s just—” He broke off, and then said sharply: “Why h
ave you come, Anna—now?” She didn’t know that the bitterness in his voice meant, “Now that I can’t be of any use to anyone.”

  She said earnestly: “I couldn’t come before, because I didn’t know. I only saw about it in a paper yesterday in Florence. I came at once.”

  He gave her a curious look. “You came from Florence? Why?”

  “Well, I thought—I thought—”

  “Don’t you realise that I have to appear before the court tomorrow on a charge of swindling?” His voice was harsh.

  “Y-yes.”

  “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “You don’t ask me if I’m guilty,” he said dryly.

  “But—but I don’t imagine for a moment that you are,” Anna said. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter.”

  “It—doesn’t matter!” Tony’s voice was slightly hoarse. And then suddenly he was clinging to her like a little boy, with his face hidden against her. “Oh, you darling little fool! You silly little angel!” She could just hear the smothered words.

  “Tony dear. Tony dear.” She was stroking his thick, rather tumbled hair, and trying quite unsuccessfully to make him look up at her. Then she said very ridiculously: “It’s all right, I’m here.”

  He laughed a little unsteadily at that, and sat up, pushing back his hair. “I’m sorry to make such a fool of myself, only—”

  “Yes, I know,” Anna said. “Please, Tony, don’t try to explain it away. It’s—very—precious.”

  He glanced at her curiously, but he didn’t make any comment. He said:

  “Don’t you really mind whether I did it or not?”

  Anna smiled. “It isn’t so important as lots of other things—at least, not so far as I am concerned.”

  “Isn’t it?” He smiled too. “Well, I didn’t do it.”

  “Then I’m glad,” Anna said simply.

  He pressed the back of her hand against his cheek. “I wish I could tell you what it’s like to have you say these dear, unreasonable things, when even my own people—” He broke off and bit his lip.