Miss Silver Comes To Stay

Mary Stuart wrote, “My end is in my beginning.” It is easier to agree with her than to decide what is the beginning, and what the end. When Miss Silver came down to Melling on a visit to an old school friend she became involved in a story which had begun a long time before, and whose end may yet be quite unknown, since what happened yesterday must needs affect today and set out a pattern for tomorrow. It is not, of course, necessary to follow the pattern, but is sometimes easier, and ease is always tempting.

Just where does the story begin—twenty-five years before when two young girls went to a dance and met the same young man? A fair girl who was Catherine Lee, and a dark girl who was Henrietta Cray—Catherine and Rietta, distant cousins, schoolfellows, and bosom friends, eighteen years of age, and James Theodulph Lessiter just turned twenty-one. Perhaps it begins there, or perhaps still farther back when three generations of Lessiters took whatever they wanted from the world and paid out of a steadily dwindling capital till in the end there wasn’t much for the last of them except an impoverished estate, a shabby old house, and an inherited conviction that the world was his oyster.

The story might begin there, or a little later when what James Lessiter wanted most out of all the world was Rietta Cray. He told her so in the orchard of Melling House under a May moon when she was nineteen and he was twenty-two. She told Catherine, and Catherine condoled. “You know, darling, there really isn’t any money at all, and Aunt Mildred will be furious.“ On the strength of long association and distant kinship, Mrs. Lessiter was Aunt Mildred to both the girls. None of which would have made either of them anything but a most unwelcome daughter-in-law, and what little money there was remained quite firmly in Mildred Lessiter’s hands. James couldn’t lay a finger on it. He went out into the world to make his fortune with large expectations and a conquering air. At twenty-three Catherine had married Edward Welby and was gone from Melling, and Rietta was settling down to nurse an invalid mother and bring up her sister’s boy, Carr Robertson, because Margaret and her husband were in India. Margaret died there, and after a decent interval Major Robertson married again. He sent money for Carr’s education, but he did not come home, and by and by he practically ceased to write. He died when Carr was fifteen. Perhaps the story begins there with Carr’s grudge against a world which would have got along very well without him. Or perhaps it begins with Catherine Welby’s return as a childless widow. Mildred Lessiter was still alive. Catherine went to see her, cried a good deal, and was offered the Gate House at a nominal rent. ”Really quite sweet, you know, Rietta— those dear little crinkly roses all over it. And being in the grounds of Melling House—well, it’s rather nice, don’t you think? And Aunt Mildred says Alexander can keep up the garden for me whilst he’s doing all the rest. It’s too, too sweet of her, and I shall be able to live on practically nothing at all, which is just as well, because that’s about as much as I shall have when everything is settled. It’s a very great shock to me Edward’s affairs being in such a state, and you know, when you’ve been accustomed to having everything it isn’t at all easy to come down to thinking about every halfpenny— is it?”

Rietta gave her an odd fleeting smile.

“I don’t know, Cathy, but then, you see, I’ve never had—” she paused deliberately, and then added, “everything.”

It was fifteen years after this that Miss Silver came down to visit her old friend Mrs. Voycey.

As the train came to a standstill in Lenton station, Miss Maud Silver closed a capacious handbag upon her knitting and the purse from which she had just extracted her railway ticket, and descending a rather inconveniently high step, stood looking about her for a porter and for Mrs. Voycey. The question of whether she would recognize her after a lapse of years which might very easily have obliterated any likeness to the girl whom she remembered was naturally in the forefront of her mind. Cissy Christopher had become Cecilia Voycey, and the friends who had started as schoolgirls were elderly women.

Miss Silver did not consider that she herself had changed very much. Looking pensively that very morning at a photograph taken when she was leaving school to enter upon her first engagement as a governess, she reflected that even after all this time it was not at all a bad likeness. There was now some grey in her hair, but a good deal of its original mousy brown persisted, and probably would persist to the end. She still did it in just the same way, with an Alexandra fringe very firmly controlled under a net. Her neat features had not altered. Her pale, smooth skin had become older without losing its pallor or its smoothness. As for her clothes, they were not the same, but they were in the same manner— the black coat in its fifth year of faithful service, the little fur tie older, thinner, paler than it had been ten years ago, but still so cosy, so comfortable. Even in the summer she went nowhere without it, much experience having warned her how extremely cold and draughty a village can become overnight. Her hat almost perfectly resembled the hat in the photograph, having a great many bows of ribbon at the back and a bunch of forget-me-nots and pansies on the left-hand side. This continuity of what she felt to be quiet good taste should make the task of recognition easier for her friend. But Cissy Christopher—well, candidly, almost anything might have happened to Cissy Christopher. The picture of a large raw-boned girl with a poking head, a rattling tongue, and quite enormous feet came back from the past.

Looking along the platform, Miss Silver shook her head and dismissed the vision, for there, advancing to meet her, was a massive figure in thick checked tweeds and a rather battered hat on the back of her head. Not Cissy Christopher, who had been dead and gone for many a year, but quite undoubtedly Cecilia Voycey, flushed, bustling, hearty, and full of the kindest welcome.

Before she knew what was going to happen Miss Silver was being kissed.

“Maud! I’d have known you anywhere! Well, of course we’re both a few years older—we won’t say how many. Not that I mind. I always say being elderly is the best part of one’s life. You’ve got over all the tiresome things like being in love, and wondering what’s going to happen to you—you’ve made your friends, and you’ve made your life, and you go along very pleasantly. Hawkins—here!” She reached out sideways and grabbed a passing porter by the arm. “This lady has got some luggage. Tell him what it is, Maud, and he’ll bring it out to the car.”

As they drove away from the station yard in the small car which appeared to be a very tight fit for its owner, Mrs. Voycey was loud in her pleasure at this eagerly awaited reunion.

“I’ve been counting the days—just like we used to when it was getting on for the end of term. Funny we should have lost sight of each other for all these years, but you know how it is—you swear eternal friendship, and at first you write reams, and then you don’t write so much, and then you don’t write at all. Everything’s new, and you meet a lot of different people. And then, of course, I went out to India and married, and I wasn’t very happy, though I dare say it was a good deal my own fault, and if I had my time over again, which I wouldn’t for the world, I’d probably manage much better. But anyhow it’s all over now. Poor John died getting on for twenty years ago, and we’d been separated for some time before that. I came in for some money from an uncle, so I was able to leave him, and I’ve been living at Melling ever since. My father was the parson there, you remember, so it’s always felt like home. He only lived a year after I came back, but I built myself a house and I’m very comfortable. Now, what about you? You started off as a governess—what on earth made you take up detecting? You know, when I met Alvina Grey—she’s a sort of distant cousin—and she told me all about you and that frightful murder case—the woman with the eternity earrings—well, first of all I thought it couldn’t be you, and then she described you, and I thought perhaps it was, and then I wrote to you and—here we are. But you haven’t told me what made you take it up—detecting, I mean.”

Whatever else the long years had changed, Cecilia Voycey still had Cissy Christopher’s rattling tongue. Miss Silver gave her slight prim cough.

“It is rather difficult to say—a combination of circumstances—I believe I was guided. My scholastic experience has been extremely valuable.”

“You must tell me all about everything!” said Mrs. Voycey with enthusiasm.

She had at this point to draw in very close to the side of the lane in order to avoid two young people standing under the opposite hedge. Miss Silver, observing them with interest, saw a girl in scarlet and a tall young man in grey flannel slacks and a loose tweed jacket. The girl was excessively pretty—really quite unnecessarily so. A singular figure for a country lane on an autumn day, with her flaring clothes, her pale gold hair, her careful complexion. The young man had a dark, tormented look.

Mrs. Voycey waved a hand out of the window, squeezed past them, and explained.

“Carr Robertson. He’s down here on a visit to his aunt, Rietta Cray who brought him up. The girl’s staying there too. He brought her—just like that, you know, without a with your leave or by your leave—at least that’s what Catherine Welby says and she always seems to know all Rietta’s affairs. Manners of the present day! I wonder what my father would have said if one of my brothers had just walked in and said, ‘This is Fancy Bell.’ ”

“Fancy?”

“That’s what he calls her—I believe her name is Frances. And I suppose we shall hear that they are engaged—or married!” She gave a hearty laugh. “Or perhaps not—you never can tell, can you? You’d have thought once bitten, twice shy. Carr’s been married already—another of these flighty blonde girls. She ran off with someone, and died. It’s only about two years ago, and you’d have thought it would have made him more careful.”

“She is very pretty,” said Miss Silver mildly.

Mrs. Voycey snorted in the manner for which she had so often been reproved at school.

“Men haven’t a particle of sense,” she declared.

They came out of the lane upon a typically rural scene—a village green complete with pond and ducks; the church with its old graveyard; the Vicarage; the village inn with its swinging sign depicting a wheatsheaf whose original gold was now almost indistinguishable from a faded background; the entrance pillars and lodge of a big house; a row of cottages, their gardens still bright with sunflower, phlox, and michaelmas daisy.

“I’m just on the other side of the Green,” said Mrs. Voycey. She took a hand off the wheel to point. “That’s the Vicarage next the church—much too big for Mr. Ainger. He’s a bachelor, but his sister keeps house for him. I don’t like her—I never did—though I don’t say she doesn’t make herself useful in the village, because she does. He’d like to marry Rietta Cray, but she won’t have him—I don’t know why, because he’s a very charming person. Anyhow, that’s Rietta’s house, the little white one with the hedge. Her father was our doctor—very much respected. And the drive going up between those pillars takes you to Melling House. It belongs to the Lessiters, but old Mrs. Lessiter died a few years ago, and the son hasn’t been near the place for more than twenty years, not even to his mother’s funeral, because it was in the war and I believe he was out of England. He was engaged to Rietta, you know, but it didn’t come off—no money, though he’s made a lot since—just one of those boy and girl affairs. But neither of them has married anyone else, and now we’re all quite terribly interested because he has just come back. After all these years! Not of course that anything is likely to come of it, but in a village you might as well be dead as not take an interest in your neighbours.”

At this point Miss Silver was understood to say that people were always interesting.

Mrs. Voycey slowed down to avoid a dog.

“Shoosh, Rover—you can’t scratch in the middle of the road!” She turned back to Miss Silver. “Somebody’s bound to run over him some day, but I hope it won’t be me.” She pointed again. “Catherine Welby lives in the lodge of Melling House—there, just inside the pillars. They call it the Gate House, but it’s really just a rather better sort of lodge. She is some sort of connection of the Lessiters—very convenient for her, because she gets the house for practically nothing, and all the fruit and vegetables she wants into the bargain. So I hope James Lessiter won’t turn her out, for I’m sure I don’t know what she would do if he did.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“Her means are narrow?”

Mrs. Voycey nodded with emphasis.

“Practically non-existent, I should say, though you’d never think so to look at her. I’ll ask her to tea, and you’ll see for yourself. She’s still very pretty, though I always preferred Rietta’s looks myself. They’re the same age, forty-three, but no one makes anything of that nowadays. Creams, powders, washes, lipstick, and permanent waving—really, as long as you keep your figure there’s no need to look any age at all. Catherine might be no more than thirty. Of course if you put on weight like I have you’re out of it, and anyhow I don’t suppose I could have been bothered—fiddle-faddles aren’t in my line. Ah now—here we are!”

As she spoke she turned in at the miniature drive of a miniature villa. Beds of scarlet geranium and bright blue lobelia bloomed on either side of the front door, They were hardly less brilliant than the red brick of the walls. After twenty years’ exposure to the elements Staplehurst Lodge looked as if it had just come from the builder’s hands, with its emerald paint, its shining door-knocker, and its generally spick-and-span appearance. It stood out from the village background like a patch of pink flannelette on some old soft brocade. This, however, was not a simile which would have occurred to Miss Silver, who had no affection for domestic architecture of the early English type—“so dark, so inconvenient, and often so sadly insanitary.” She considered Staplehurst Lodge a very comfortable residence, and was both touched and pleased when her old friend slipped a hand inside her arm, squeezed it affectionately, and said,

“Well, this is my little place, and I hope you’ll have a happy visit here.”