The Silent Valley

by Jean S. MacLeod

  For once in her life shock could not be absorbed in activity. There was nothing for her to do. Matron had done it all. She came to the door of the room when they knocked and followed them to the bed, but she did not speak. If anything, she was paler than ever, with a thin, withdrawn look about her which made Jane feel sorry for her without knowing why.

  'Will you come into my room and take a cup of tea?' she asked.

  In the corridor they met Sir Gervaise Cortonwell and Stuart, and she seemed only to see the older man.

  'You're too late,' she said beneath her breath. 'Doctor Sark died half an hour ago.'

  Her eyes were stony as they rested on Sir Gervaise's face, and Jane thought how grey the older man looked. He was more stooped than ever as he turned away, suddenly and inexplicably aged. Was Matron blaming him for Tom's death, she wondered, thinking that he should have operated more quickly?

  They went into the study and sat on the chintz-covered chairs, Ada Sark and Jane together near the window and Matron facing them across the hearth. They did not speak for a very long time.

  'I can't believe it,' Ada said at last. 'It seems no time since he was a lad at school, no time at all.' She drew a deep breath. 'It will leave a gap in our lives,' she sighed. 'He was such a live wire, was Tom.'

  Matron collected their cups on to the tray and Jane rose, as if at a signal.

  'I think we ought to go now,' she said. 'Thank you, Matron, for the tea.'

  They walked together to the door and Agnes Lawdon said almost harshly:

  'I'm sorry about the way you left Conyers. If you wish a public apology, I shall make it.'

  Jane shook her head.

  'It doesn't matter now,' she said. 'I shall have to find work, of course, but it will be away from Norchester.'

  'I see.' The older woman still seemed to hesitate. 'You are a good nurse,' she said awkwardly. 'I think it would be wrong for you to give up your profession. If you should change your mind about working here, let me know.'

  Jane drew the collar of her coat up under her chin, smiling faintly.

  'I couldn't come back to Conyers, Matron,' she said quietly. 'I think you will understand.'

  'Perhaps you are right.' The momentary weakness had passed and Agnes Lawdon was herself again. 'You are young enough to be able to make a fresh start elsewhere,' she agreed. 'You will let me know, of course, when you need a reference.'

  'Yes, Matron,' Jane said. 'I shall let you know.'

  In the dark, rain-washed courtyard outside she caught the gleam of a yellow car and Stuart stepped towards them out of the night.

  'I waited, Jane,' he said. 'Let me take you back to your hotel.'

  'My, how kind you've been!' Mrs. Sark sighed with relief as she settled back against the softly-cushioned upholstery. 'You were a good friend of Tom's, I expect, at the hospital?'

  Stuart tucked a heavy fur rug round her knees.

  'I didn't know him very well,' he confessed, 'but that makes very little difference. Will you stay the night at the White Hart, Mrs. Sark, or would you like me to run you down to Crale?'

  Ada hesitated. Hotels had never seemed very homely places at the best of times, and when one faced the shock of sudden death home held its comfort.

  'It's very late,' she pointed out. 'It would take us all of two hours to get there.'

  Stuart looked at his watch.

  'It's not quite nine o'clock. I'm perfectly willing to take you if you would like to go.'

  'I—think that would be best.'

  He looked at Jane as he closed the car door.

  'You'll go with her? I'll see to everything here.'

  'Why should you do it all?'

  His fingers fastened securely under her elbow as he led the way round to the far side of the car.

  'Because you're about all in and haven't realised it yet. You've taken about as much as any human being can stand without cracking up, Jane. Go down to Crale with Aunt Ada and I'll bring you back whenever you want to come.'

  The insistence behind the words was not to be disobeyed. This was the new, authoritative Stuart speaking, the man in command of the situation who would not take no for an answer. Jane felt that he could see the way ahead far more clearly than she could, and with the admission she acknowledged a sudden weakness, the desire to give in to any suggestion which would shift some of the weight of these past few days from her drooping shoulders.

  A desperate tiredness had taken possession of her and she did not want to think. At least Crale would be restful and far enough away from Norchester to let her plan for the future without the memory of the past rising up at every street corner to mock her.

  She stayed at Crale for three weeks. Ada Sark made no pretence about her sudden loneliness. It was nice, she said, to have someone young about the house, someone who had known Tom. Jane felt the days passing slowly, irretrievably, bearing her away from the past, yet she had still to make a definite decision about the future. She had seen Stuart at Tom's funeral, but that was all. He had not come to Crale since. Perhaps he had even gone back to Switzerland, back to Della.

  There was no pain in the thought now, just a dull resignation, an acceptance of the way life must be. She had nothing more to give to regret, nor to hope, nor sorrow.

  When she told Mrs. Sark that she must go, Ada accepted that, too,

  'I couldn't hope to keep you,' she said.

  Jane made her plans, conscious of a numbness of spirit such as she had never experienced before, aware that the pattern she was weaving for the days ahead had no real place in her heart. Then, two days before she was due to leave Rose Cottage, Stuart came to Crale.

  She was so convinced that he must have returned to Zurich that for several seconds she stared at the yellow car unbelievingly. It was a gusty day in March with a brisk wind beating up the Channel and the hills of Wales gloriously clear against the western sky, an English day with the first promise of spring about it, a day for renewed hope and new beginnings, and she had come for a walk along the sea front to clear her mind of its final indecision. The car had pulled up facing her at the far end of the promenade and Stuart got out and came striding towards her.

  'Jane,' he said, 'have you a minute or two to hear what I have to say?'

  She nodded wordlessly, the surprise of his coming too great to permit of speech, the spell of his nearness too disturbing to what she had tried to call her new-found peace of mind to allow her to look at him for very long.

  He opened the car door, standing aside for her to get in, and then he drove northwards, out of the village a little way until they were high on the cliffs and alone. He pulled the car up and turned towards her.

  'Jane,' he said slowly, 'I'm going back to Switzerland.'

  Her heart seemed to turn over, in spite of the fact that she had believed him already there.

  'I—thought you had gone,' she said. 'It seemed—a long time to stay in England when—when all you wanted was out there.'

  He stretched across the wheel, taking her hands and holding them in a grip that hurt.

  'All I wanted!' he repeated. 'You still think my career matters most! How blind you can be, Jane—how unsure of yourself! I'm asking you—begging you to come with me.'

  She raised her head, compelled by the insistence in his voice, the hardening grip of his strong fingers.

  'Because of Della?' she asked miserably.

  'Della?' He sounded as if he had momentarily forgotten all about Della. 'What has she to do with it? I'm asking you to come because I love you, because I've never ceased to love you in all these years. I'm asking you to come, Jane, for the second time.'

  Because I love you! The words sounded in Jane's heart like the breath of spring itself. They were all she wanted to hear.

  'Oh! Stuart,' she said. 'Oh, Stuart ‑!'

  He gathered her into her arms, then, kissing her gently, and it was as if the years between now and their first loving had never been. A great restfulness stole over Jane, an undisputed peace. She lay in his arms a
s if she had always belonged there, the memory of their parting receding with every breath she drew.

  It was minutes before reality came crashing back, before she stirred in his arms, thrusting him from her.

  'And Della?' she cried. 'How can you say all this when Della's happiness is involved, too?'

  For the second time he looked frankly puzzled by the mention of Della's name.

  'Della will be as pleased about all this as a dog with two tails,' he said with complete assurance. 'I've just heard from her, as a matter of fact. The Kirchhofer brothers are back in Zurich and Della and Martin Kirchhofer are engaged to be married. The marriage won't be for some time yet, until there's absolutely no doubt about her health, of course, but I don't think they need worry unduly. Della will be cured. That was what I owed to the Cortonwells, Jane,' he said, taking her in his arms again with a determination that would brook no opposition this time. 'Sir Gervaise did a great deal for me when my people were killed and he made it possible for me to go on with my studies afterwards. At times I've thought him strange—hard and even bombastic about his personal success—but he gave me my chance and when he put Della in my care it was something like a sacred trust to me. Now that she will get well get well I feel that I have more or less discharged my obligation to them. Della will be happy with Martin. There has never been anyone else for her since she first met him at St. Moritz years ago, but she knew that they couldn't contemplate marriage while her health remained in danger.'

  'Martin Kirchhofer!' Jane said. 'Oh, I should have known! I should have realised how much it mattered to Della when she couldn't make the pace, when she believed that an ability to meet him on equal terms—to climb to the heights with him—was essential to their love!' Suddenly she was shaking, clinging to Stuart passionately. 'Oh, Stuart! what a fool I've been, loving you all this time and not knowing—not being sure that nobody else could matter quite so much once we bad loved!'

  'I made it difficult for you, didn't I?' he said gently, drawing her towards him and crushing her head against his shoulder. He spoke with his lips close to her hair, caressingly : 'It wasn't easy, Jane, and we didn't exactly help each other. I went out to Switzerland in the utmost bitterness determined to build a life without love against a background of success and accumulating wealth, but it didn't work out. Not the way I imagined it would.' He let his lips linger on her hair for a moment. 'That day in the chalet above the clinic I realised just how wrong I had been, but I have lived out my disappointment there, day after day, alone with my regrets, seeing you there with me as you should have been —imagining so many things.' His arm tightened about her. 'I took you there that day—the day after Tom phoned you from Arosa—to prove to myself that my love was dead, to see you in the chalet which would have been our first home and not care, but it was no use! I did care. I still loved you more than life itself, and there was an end to pretence. It was. then that I realised what it would mean to me if you married Sark.'

  'I had nothing to give Tom,' she said unsteadily, 'except assurance while he needed it.'

  'Yet, when you seemed bent on marrying him, I thought you were trying to be content with half measures for some reason best known to yourself, and even when you told me you were leaving Oberzach together I still couldn't accept the fact that you were in love with the fellow. I tried to convince myself with the knowledge of the sacrifice you had made for his career—the kind of sacrifice I thought you had once refused to make for mine—but it was useless. You belonged to me by every right of love. You were mine! I could see no other way than that, although you held me off at every turn.' She stirred in his arms, but he held her closer. 'That's why I came back to England with you, I suppose. I couldn't be convinced that your love was dead, and there were so many things to prove that mine remained a living torture in my breast. That awful moment when I followed your tracks through the snow to the broken ice bridge will be with me for ever, I suppose. I imagined you hurtling down into the ravine an hour or only seconds before, and then I came round by another way and found you in Tom Sark's arms!'

  Jane twisted round to look at him.

  'You don't believe that? You don't believe any of that now?' she implored.

  For a full second he gazed back into her eyes, and then, purposefully, he bent his dark head to kiss her full on the lips.

  'No, my darling, I don't believe any of it,' he said. 'All we must ever believe is that we are in love, that nothing can alter that now!'