The Silent Valley

by Jean S. MacLeod

  'We'll go in that one,' he said. 'Shall we?'

  The question was directed to Hazel as well as to the excited Linda, and Hazel rose as her small daughter offered Stuart a confident hand.

  'Whatever you believe about what happened four years ago, Hazel,' Stuart said quietly, 'let me take you to Jane now. She needs someone at this moment as much as she did then—perhaps even more so.'

  He could not tell -Hazel about the sacrifice her sister had made all these years ago, could not explain that it was Jane who had refused to go abroad with him in that moment of her family's greatest need. He did, however, ask a rather blunt question, which was typical of him.

  'You've married again, of course?'

  A faint colour dyed Hazel's cheeks.

  'Yes. At first when the doctors thought I wouldn't walk any more I suppose I was difficult to deal with,' she confessed as they went out to the car. 'I didn't think life was worth living and I must have caused Jane and my mother endless heartache, but then, gradually, I began to respond to a new treatment they tried at the hospital and after about a year I could sit up and there was just the chance that I might eventually be able to walk again.' She drew a deep breath as Stuart opened the car door for her to get in. 'I don't know why I'm telling you all this,' she added. 'Perhaps it's because you're a doctor and will understand, though you didn't understand Jane very well.'

  No, he hadn't understood Jane! He had shot off at a tangent, blaming her bitterly at the first defection, and the desperate fact remained that he couldn't turn back the years. You couldn't undo the past! Jane was now in love with someone else. Suddenly he was thinking that she had made a similar sort of sacrifice for Tom Sark. Taking the rap for the blood transfusion business had cost her a good job at Conyers and it hadn't really been necessary, after all. He had often wondered why Matron had wanted to get rid of Jane and seized on that small mistake in the operating theatre as the ideal opportunity.

  'It was another year before I could even stand,' Hazel went on, as if she felt compelled to recite the whole story once she had begun. 'And all that time Jane worked at Conyers and took care of Lindy in between. Then, quite suddenly, my mother died. I was able to walk by that time, but I still couldn't cope with an outside job. Jane and I decided to keep on the house. I could manage that, and Lindy, too, after a while, and I really liked housekeeping best. Then, about six months ago, I met Eric.' She paused, momentarily confused by the grim expression which had crossed her companion's face. 'Jane thought I should take my chance of happiness,' she told him a little breathlessly. 'She wouldn't stand in my way.'

  'Of course she wouldn't,' he answered dryly. 'Jane's like that.'

  There was a long silence. Hazel wished she didn't feel so uncomfortable, and really he had no right to make her feel that way! Hadn't he let Jane down, too, four years ago?

  Stuart brought the car to a standstill under a stone portico of the White Hart. He was not quite sure how he was going to meet Jane, but certainly she must see her sister.

  The White Hart was busy at that hour, but he found the receptionist, who made the necessary enquiries for him. She came back after five minutes to say that Jane had gone out for the day.

  'But that's impossible,' he said. 'I saw her here less than a couple of hours ago! Just after eleven, as a matter of fact.'

  The receptionist nodded.

  'She went out at quarter to twelve, sir, saying that she might not be hack much before seven in the evening. She did mention, though, that she would ring the hotel in case there was any message for her from the nursing home.'

  'I see.' There was nothing for him to do but accept checkmate. 'Thank you very much. I don't suppose Miss Calvert would say when she intended to phone you?' he enquired as an afterthought.

  'About four o'clock, sir.'

  'You've no idea where from?'

  'No. I'm sorry!'

  Well, that was that! He turned back to the waiting Hazel and Linda Jane, who was growing tired and restless.

  'I'm afraid we've drawn a blank.' He was not thinking so much of Hazel as of Jane's possible disappointment when she eventually heard that she had missed her sister. 'Jane appears to have gone off for the day somewhere—or at least, till seven o'clock this evening. Could you possibly stay here overnight?' he asked without much hope.

  'I couldn't possibly,' Hazel told him. 'There's Eric, you see. He'll be in at six, expecting his tea. We didn't come to stay, only to see Jane for an hour or two.'

  'If you're here at four o'clock you will perhaps be able to speak to her on the telephone,' he suggested, wondering what he was to do with them till four. 'That would be better than nothing. In the meantime, let me give you some lunch.'

  'Oh, I really couldn't!' Hazel protested, remembering that she hadn't exactly minced her words when they had first met and she had accused him of deserting Jane. 'I—we'll get something at a cafe somewhere. I know Norchester quite well.'

  'You should do,' he said with a warm smile which somehow cleared the air a little. 'All the same, Hazel, I insist that you have your lunch here with me.'

  The man was used to giving orders, Hazel thought. It was typical of him, but behind the hardness was a sincerity and kindness which she could not doubt.

  'Please, Mummy,' Linda Jane put in, 'I'm hungry now!'

  'That appears to settle everything!' Hazel laughed, meeting Stuart's eyes. 'Though I don't know why you should insist on being so kind.'

  'Put it down to my friendship with Jane,' he said enigmatically, and Hazel was left to wonder what could possibly have come between him and her sister when his personal charm seemed all that could be desired. Could it, she mused, have been Jane's fault, after all?

  During the meal she was aware of Stuart having to make an effort to sustain interest in her conversation. His thoughts were apparently elsewhere, and Hazel rose from the table a trifle piqued and said that they would go.

  Linda Jane had clambered on to Stuart's knee, her initial shyness completely dissipated by the promise of another ride in the yellow car, and he looked up at Hazel in some surprise.

  'I thought you would want to speak to Jane,' he said, glancing at his watch. 'It's almost three o'clock and she may telephone earlier than she said. It seems a pity to miss her for the sake of half an hour or so when we have waited so long. Isn't there a later bus you could get?'

  'There's one about five.' Hazel hesitated. 'I'd like to speak to Jane,' she confessed. 'It seems almost as if I'm running away now that she needs help.'

  During the meal Stuart had told her about Jane's engagement, feeling that it would be expected of him. He had also explained about Tom's accident, since that was the reason why Jane was keeping in such close contact with the hotel. For the past hour he had been wondering where she could possibly have gone, but the simple explanation, when it came, did not surprise him.

  Jane had gone down to Crale with Tom's aunt. Confronted with the hurried journey following upon the news of Tom's accident, Ada Sark had begun to feel the weight of her years. She confessed to Jane that she was dreading the journey to Crale and back and heaved a sigh of the utmost relief when Jane eventually offered to go with her.

  'It will mean there and back with very little time to spare,' she had warned, but Ada had accepted the condition without demur.

  They reached Crale shortly after one o'clock, had a quick meal in a deserted cafe on the sea front, and went to the cottage to see to the cat and pack Mrs. Sark's small week-end case.

  At quarter to four Jane went down the lane to the Post Office to phone through to the White Hart. The line was very clear, but the swift, anxious beating of her heart seemed magnified a thousandfold as she waited in a tiny booth.

  'Oh, Miss Calvert!' the receptionist said at the far end. 'There's someone here to speak to you.'

  Jane could not answer. Two strangling hands seemed to have reached up and encircled her throat and a loud buzzing sounded in her ears so that she was afraid she would not be able to hear at all. Through it she reco
gnised Stuart's voice.

  'Jane, are you there?'

  She thought that she knew what he was going to tell her. His voice sounded concerned, with a new urgency about it which stunned her senses.

  'Is it—Tom?' she asked. 'Have you heard from Conyers?'

  'No. As far as I know, everything is much the same there,' he said to her utter relief. 'I phoned about half an hour ago. Matron was with him and he was still asleep. She doesn't think he should have any visitors until later in the evening.'

  'I thought—when you asked to speak to me that it must be—bad news,' Jane gasped.

  !Not always!' he said with a hint of the old cynicism in his deep voice. 'Your sister is here, Jane,' he added.

  'Hazel! But how ‑?'

  'She came through from Nottingham for the day to see you when she got your letter—the one you posted in Zurich. We've had a meal together—and a long talk.'

  He seemed to have added that last sentence deliberately, and there was something in his voice which she could not quite understand, a restraint and an excitement combined, which seemed very unlike Stuart, the Stuart she had come to know during the past four months.

  'She's waiting to speak to you now,' he said. 'I can't take up all the call, but, Jane, I must see you as soon as ever you get back! Where are you now?' the quiet voice went on. 'Is it near enough for me to come and fetch you?'

  'I'm at Crale,' Jane answered dazedly. 'I came down with Aunt Ada.'

  The name struck Stuart a blow in the face. It was the measure of her relationship with Tom Sark, for plump, cheerful little 'Aunt Ada' would be her aunt by marriage if Tom lived!

  It made no difference to the fact that he must see Jane immediately, he told himself doggedly, though something had gone out of his voice when he said:

  'I'll be waiting here at the hotel when you get in. Unfortunately, it looks as if you're just going to miss seeing Hazel. Here she is, though. I'm putting her on now.'

  Jane almost wept at the sound of her sister's voice, the blessed relief of contact with one of her own family, at last. There wasn't very much they could say. Just that Jane would come to Nottingham whenever she could reasonably get away—when Tom was safely out of the wood. Yes, her engagement had been sudden, but she had known Doctor Sark for quite a long time. Hazel remembered him coming to Heppleton, of course? Was Linda Jane there? Could she just manage to say 'Hullo?'

  Hazel held Linda up to the instrument and a second or two later the time signal went.

  'Don't forget, Jane! If there's anything I can do.'

  'I won't forget, Hazel. Good-bye, dear!'

  There was nothing Hazel could do, Jane thought. Nothing anyone could do. It all rested with Providence. Jane had ceased to call it Fate now. She stood in the hot little booth for several minutes, staring at the silent instrument on the wall. What was it Stuart wanted to say to her that was so urgent? What lay behind the deep insistency in his voice when he had told her that they must meet without delay?

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  It seemed an eternity till seven o'clock. She walked back along the lane to Rose Cottage, wondering if they could possibly catch an earlier bus from Crale, but Aunt Ada had prepared tea for them and she would have been hurt if Jane had refused it.

  'Mrs. Cartwright next door will take Toddy,' she explained the small details of her household. Toddy was the ginger kitten Tom had given her for Christmas, the seventh in a long succession of cats who seemed destined to meet untimely ends. 'I can stay a day or two when I know he's being cared for properly.'

  Jane smiled at the thought of Tom naming the kitten with a glass in his hand, but immediately her eyes darkened as she remembered Conyers and the verdict that was yet to come.

  The bus journey seemed interminable and once or twice she failed to answer Aunt Ada when she spoke. Quiet, generous Aunt Ada seemed almost garrulous by the time they had reached Norchester and pulled into the bus station.

  'There, now, isn't that kind!' she exclaimed even before Jane had noticed the waiting car. 'Fancy him coming to meet us at the bus! I said from the beginning what a thoughtful young man he was!'

  Stuart was coming towards them and Jane's heart raced to meet him. It was madness, she knew, but such necessary madness. If she tried to smother her emotions at every turn something would give way in the end. She had time to compose herself, waiting in the crowded bus till the passengers before her got down.

  Stuart helped Aunt Ada, taking her shabby leather case and propelling her by the elbow across the busy street. He had looked at Jane directly as she had stepped on to the pavement, a long, searching look which had quickened her pulses but told her nothing. Evidently he meant to see Mrs. Sark safely to the White Hart before he told her what he had to say.

  They reached the hotel at quarter to seven. He had ordered dinner for them for half-past.

  'Can you spare me that time?' he asked Jane as Aunt Ada was whirled up in the lift. 'This is most important.'

  'Yes,' she said. 'There should be plenty of privacy in the lounge.'

  Had he wanted privacy? She could not guess and knew that it did not matter very much. She seemed to have reached the end of a very long journey, not the journey from Zurich which had ended at Conyers, but a steeper, more uphill road where she had been bruised and cut upon the way. If her feet faltered now it was from very tiredness, the desperate fatigue of the spirit which surpasses any physical weariness and is not so readily replaced.

  Stuart led the way to the alcoved lounge and she was glad that it was empty, after all. For some unknown reason she felt ready to weep, the tears choking against her throat. Stuart rang for drinks, forcing her to accept one.

  'I told you I had spent part of today with Hazel,' he said quietly when they were alone again. 'Jane, why couldn't you have told me the truth four years ago?'

  There was no doubting his meaning. She did not need confirmation of the fact that he now knew why she had refused to go to Zurich with him and share his student struggles, but it did not seem to matter now, not as it had done once, when she had lain spent with wishing and praying that just such a miracle as this would happen. In the interval had come Della, and now there was Tom, dependent upon her, relying upon her strength in this emergency. Their lives, which had once been entangled in misunderstanding, were now bound up by. honour and a sacred promise.

  'Jane,' he said thickly, 'forgive me. There's nothing else I can say. All those unrepeatable things—the bitterness and the accusation—could never be shame enough for doubting you in the first place.'

  He rose and paced to the window, standing with his back to her, and Jane felt as if a deadly weight was pressing her to the earth, the weight of hopelessness, of a love forced to cry 'too late!'

  'That's what we do with our youth and our love,' he said, coming back to stand beside her. 'We tear it to shreds without question—for pride, and hurt, and jealousy, and we learn to suffer for these things afterwards!'

  'And afterwards,' Jane said with her hand at her throat, 'afterwards there may be compensation—for one or the other.'

  He looked down at her, his eyes dark mirrors of pain.

  'You told me once that compensation was as good as saying "second best". You don't believe that now, do you?'

  Jane's hands clenched hard by her side.

  'I don't know what I believe,' she said, 'I only know that I'm glad you've learned the truth at last, though it can't make any difference now.'

  He stared at her, the old Stuart, with all his cold composure gone and a beaten look in his eyes which made her turn her own away.

  'Well,' he said, 'I had to tell you. I couldn't let you go on believing that I didn't know. I can't blame you for not wanting to forgive the way I've treated you—the fury that drove me to want to hurt you in return. All I can hope for is that you'll come to it gradually, possibly when you've reached some other sort of happiness with Tom.'

  She could not look at him. He had spoken of her own happiness, yet there was happiness for him, too, w
ith Della. Why did Della seem so unreal, of a sudden, so much the chimera of her own fancy? Was it because so many miles lay between them, because Della was not there in the flesh to claim Stuart and did not seem strong enough to claim him in spirit?

  'There's no question of forgiveness,' she managed. 'We made a mistake, that was all. I should have told you the truth.'

  There was no immediate answer, and when she looked up his eyes were blazing, dark and passionate in his thin face.

  'My love was no mistake,' he said roughly. 'It meant everything to me and it did to you once! Whatever the truth would have done to us, Jane, it could never have reduced us to this!'

  He had gone before she could utter one cry of protest or try to stop him, and she sank back into her chair, crushed and defeated and utterly spent by the swift progress of events which had filled her long day.

  When the telephone shrilled in her bedroom twenty minutes later she lifted the receiver with the thought that nothing else could possibly happen in a day that was already overcrowded with events.

  'Yes, this is Jane Calvert speaking. Who? Matron! Oh ‑'

  Agnes Lawdon's voice came across the line with measured persistence.

  'Doctor Sark is sinking. He has asked for you. Can you get in touch with—his aunt?'

  'Yes.' The word had been no more than a whisper. 'Yes, Matron, I'll come at once.'

  It was a formula, a repetition from the old days at Conyers, and Jane followed it up automatically. Don't panic in an emergency. But what an emergency! She grew sick at the thought of having to tell Aunt Ada, of seeing the round, homely face stricken with grief, the gentle eyes full of tears, yet there was no one else to do it. In all the years of her training Jane had never become hardened to this sort of thing. Death was for ever a tragedy to those left behind.

  Ada Sark took it very well. In some ways, Jane realised, Aunt had expected it. She would see Tom again. That was the main thing.

  When they reached Conyers Jane got out of the taxi first, looking instinctively at the long windows on the ground floor which she knew so well. The curtains had been drawn in the room next to Matron's. Tom was dead.