Contact, and Other Stories

“CONTACT!”

The first time she heard it was in the silk-hung and flower-scented peace of the little drawing room in Curzon Street. His sister Rosemary had wanted to come up to London to get some clothes--Victory clothes they called them in those first joyous months after the armistice, and decked their bodies in scarlet and silver, even when their poor hearts went in black--and Janet had been urged to leave her own drab boarding-house room to stay with the forlorn small butterfly. They had struggled through dinner somehow, and Janet had finished her coffee and turned the great chair so that she could watch the dancing fire (it was cool for May), her cloudy brown head tilted back against the rose-red cushion, shadowy eyes half closed, idle hands linked across her knees. She looked every one of her thirty years--and mortally tired--and careless of both facts. But she managed an encouraging smile at the sound of Rosemary’s shy, friendly voice at her elbow.

“Janet, these are yours, aren’t they? Mummy found them with some things last week, and I thought that you might like to have them.”

She drew a quick breath at the sight of the shabby packet.

“Why, yes,” she said evenly. “That’s good of you, Rosemary. Thanks a lot.”

“That’s all right,” murmured Rosemary diffidently. “Wouldn’t you like something to read? There’s a most frightfully exciting Western novel----”

The smile took on a slightly ironical edge.

“Don’t bother about me, my dear. You see, I come from that frightfully exciting West, and I know all about the pet rattlesnakes and the wildly Bohemian cowboys. Run along and play with your book; I’ll be off to bed in a few minutes.”

Rosemary retired obediently to the deep chair in the corner, and with the smile gone but the irony still hovering, she slipped the cord off the packet. A meagre and sorry enough array; words had never been for her the swift, docile servitors that most people found them. But the thin gray sheet in her fingers started out gallantly enough--“Beloved.” Beloved! She leaned far forward, dropping it with deft precision into the glowing pocket of embers. What next? This was more like; it began: “Dear Captain Langdon” in the small, contained writing that was her pride, and it went on soberly enough, “I shall be glad to have tea with you next Friday--not Thursday, because I must be at the hut then. It was stupid of me to have forgotten you; next time I will try to do better.” Well, she had done better the next time. She had not forgotten him again--never, never again. That had been her first letter; how absurd of Jerry, the magnificently careless, to have treasured it all that time, the miserable, stilted little thing! She touched it with curious fingers. Surely, surely he must have cared, to have cared so much for that!

It seemed incredible that she hadn’t remembered him at once when he came into the hut that second time. Of course she had only seen him for a moment and six months had passed, but he was so absurdly vivid, every inch of him, from the top of his shining, dark head to the heels of his shining, dark boots--and there were a great many inches! How could she have forgotten, even for a minute, those eyes dancing like blue fire in the brown young face, the swift, disarming charm of his smile, and, above all, his voice--how, in the name of absurdity, could any one who had once heard it ever forget Jeremy Langdon’s voice? Even now she had only to close her eyes, and it rang out again, with its clipped British accent and its caressing magic, as un-English as any Provençal troubadour’s! And yet she had forgotten; he had had to speak twice before she had even lifted her head.

“Miss America--oh, I say, she’s forgotten me, and I thought that I’d made such an everlasting impression!” The delighted amazement reached even her tired ears, and she had smiled wanly as she pushed the pile of coppers nearer to him.

“Have you been in before? It’s stupid of me, but there are such hundreds of thousands of you, and you are gone in a minute, you see. That’s your change, I think.”

“Hundreds of thousands of me, hey?” He had leaned across the counter, his face alight with mirth. “I wish to the Lord my angel mother could hear you--it’s what I’m for ever tellin’ her, though just between us, it’s stuff and nonsense. I’ve got a well-founded suspicion that I’m absolutely unique. You wait and see!”

And she had waited--and she had seen! She stirred a little, dropped the note into the flames, and turned to the next, the quiet, mocking mouth suddenly tortured and rebellious.

“No, you must be mad,” it ran, the trim writing strangely shaken. “How often have you seen me--five times? Do you know how old I am? How hard and tired and useless? No--no, a thousand times. In a little while we will wake up and find that we were dreaming.”

That had brought him to her swifter than Fate, triumphant mischief in every line of his exultant face. “Just let those damn cups slip from your palsied fingers, will you? I’m goin’ to take your honourable age for a little country air--it may keep you out of the grave for a few days longer. Never can tell! No use your scowlin’ like that. The car’s outside, and the big chief says to be off with you. Says you have no more colour than a banshee, and not half the life--can’t grasp the fact that it’s just chronic antiquity. Fasten the collar about your throat--no, higher! Darlin’, darlin’, think of havin’ a whole rippin’ day to ourselves. You’re glad, too, aren’t you, my little stubborn saint?”

Oh, that joyous and heart-breaking voice, running on and on--it made all the other voices that she had ever heard seem colourless and unreal----

“Darlin’ idiot, what do I care how old you are? Thirty, hey? Almost old enough to be an ancestor! Look at me--no, look at me. Dare you to say that you aren’t mad about me!”

Mad about him; mad, mad. She lifted her hands to her ears, but she could no more shut out the exultant voice now than she could on that windy afternoon.

“Other fellow got tired of you, did he? Good luck for us, what? You’re a fearfully tiresome person, darlin’. It’s goin’ to take me nine tenths of eternity to tell you how tiresome you are. Give a chap a chance, won’t you? The tiresomest thing about you is the way you leash up that dimple of yours. No, by George, there it is! Janie, look at me----”

She touched the place where the leashed dimple had hidden with a delicate and wondering finger--of all Jerry’s gifts to her, the most miraculous had been that small fugitive. Exiled now, for ever and for ever.

“Are you comin’ down to White Orchards next week-end? I’m off for France on the twelfth and you’ve simply got to meet my people. You’ll be insane about ’em; Rosemary’s the most beguilin’ flibbertigibbet, and I can’t wait to see you bein’ a kind of an elderly grandmother to her. What a bewitchin’ little grandmother you’re goin’ to be one of these days----”

Oh, Jerry! Oh, Jerry, Jerry! She twisted in her chair, her face suddenly a small mask of incredulous terror. No, no, it wasn’t true, it wasn’t true--never--never--never! And then, for the first time, she heard it. Far off but clear, a fine and vibrant humming, the distant music of wings! The faint, steady pulsing was drawing nearer and nearer--nearer still; it must be flying quite high. The letters scattered about her as she sprang to the open window; no, it was too high to see, and too dark, though the sky was powdered with stars, but she could hear it clearly, hovering and throbbing like some gigantic bird. It must be almost directly over her head, if she could only see it.

“It sounds--it sounds the way a humming-bird would look through a telescope,” she said half aloud, and Rosemary murmured sleepily but courteously, “What, Janet?”

“Just an airplane; no, gone now. It sounded like a bird. Didn’t you hear it?”

“No,” replied Rosemary drowsily. “We get so used to the old things that we don’t even notice them any more. Queer time to be flying.”

“It sounded rather beautiful,” said Janet, her face still turned to the stars. “Far off, but so clear and sure. I wonder--I wonder whether it will be coming back?”

Well, it came back. She went down to White Orchards with Rosemary for the following week-end, and after she had smoothed her hair and given a scornful glance at the pale face in the mirror, with its shadowy eyes and defiant mouth, she slipped out to the lower terrace for a breath of the soft country air. Half way down the flight of steps she stumbled and caught at the balustrade, and stood shaking for a moment, her face pressed against its rough surface. Once before she had stumbled on those steps, but it was not the balustrade that had saved her. She could feel his arms about her now, holding her up, holding her close and safe. The magical voice was in her ears.

“Let you go? I’ll never let you go! Poor little feet, stumblin’ in the dark, what would you do without Jerry? Time’s comin’, you cheeky little devils, when you’ll come runnin’ to him when he whistles! No use tryin’ to get away--you belong to him.”

Oh, whistle to them now, Jerry--they would run to you across the stars!

“How’d you like to marry me before I go back to-morrow? No? No accountin’ for tastes, Miss Abbott--lots of people would simply jump at it! All right, April, then. Birds and flowers and all that kind o’ thing--pretty intoxicatin’, what? No, keep still, darlin’ goose. What feller taught you to wear a dress that looks like roses and smells like roses and feels like roses? This feller? Lord help us, what a lovely liar!”

And suddenly she found herself weeping helplessly, desperately, like an exhausted child, shaken to the heart at the memory of the rose-coloured dress.

“You like me just a bit, don’t you, funny, quiet little thing? But you’d never lift a finger to hold me; that’s the wonder of you--that’s why I’ll never leave you. No, not for heaven. You can’t lose me--no use tryin’.”

But she had lost you, Jerry; you had left her, for all your promises, to terrified weeping in the hushed loveliness of the terrace, where your voice had turned her still heart to a dancing star, where your fingers had touched her quiet blood to flowers and flames and butterflies. She had believed you then. What would she ever believe again? And then she caught back the despairing sobs swiftly, for once more she heard, far off, the rushing of wings. Nearer--nearer--humming and singing and hovering in the quiet dusk. Why, it was over the garden! She flung back her head, suddenly eager to see it; it was a friendly and thrilling sound in all that stillness. Oh, it was coming lower--lower still--she could hear the throb of the propellers clearly. Where was it? Behind those trees, perhaps? She raced up the flight of steps, dashing the treacherous tears from her eyes, straining up on impatient tiptoes. Surely she could see it now! But already it was growing fainter--drifting steadily away, the distant hum growing lighter and lighter--lighter still----

“Janet!” called Mrs. Langdon’s pretty, patient voice. “Dinner-time, dear! Is there any one with you?”