She did not laugh and after a little he turned. She had been gazing at his back. “Aren’t you amused?” he asked ironically. His relations with her seemed necessarily compounded of suspicion. When he first came he had been suspicious of her acts and now he was suspicious of her thoughts.
“I was wondering,” she said, “whom you were frightened of and why I like you.” Her eyes wandered down his body from face to feet and stayed at his right heel. “You’ve worn your stockings out,” she said simply, but the way in which she turned the words on her tongue till they came out with a rounded sweetness gave to their simplicity a hidden significance.
“They are not of silk,” he said, still seeking for disguised mockery.
She held out a hand which she had kept pressed to her side. “Here is a stocking,” she said; “see if it will fit you.”
He took it from her as cautiously as if it had been a strange reptile and turned it over and over. He saw that it had been newly darned and remembered how he had seen her from the window working in the firelit space.
“You were mending this,” he said, “when I came to the window.” She made no answer and he examined it again. “A man’s stocking,” he commented.
“It was his,” she replied.
He laughed. “Do your spirits wear stockings?” he asked.
She clenched and unclenched her hands, as one nervously wrought up by another’s stupidity. “I had to do something,” she murmured rapidly as though her breath had been nearly exhausted by a too long and fatiguing race. “I couldn’t just sit.” She turned her back on him and walked to the window and leant her forehead against it, as though seeking coolness or perhaps support.
Andrews turned and turned the stocking in his hand. Once at the window Elizabeth’s figure was motionless. He could not even catch the sound of her breathing. A gap of shadow separated them, and the flickering of the flames made useless but persistent attempts to cross it. He was shamed by the patient obstinacy of their compassion, and was temporarily rapt from his own fear, hatred and self-abasement, touched for a lightning instant with a disinterested longing for self-sacrifice. He would not cross that bridge of shadows, for he feared that if he touched her he would lose the sense of something unapproachably beautiful, and his own momentary chivalry would vanish before the coward, the bully and the lustful sentimentalist to whom he was accustomed. For that instant his second criticising self was silent; indeed he was that self.
He was on the point of making some stumbling gesture of contrition, when the coward in him leaped up and closed his mouth. Be careful, it cautioned him. You are a fugitive; you must not tie yourself. Even as he surrendered to that prompting he regretted the surrender. He knew that for a few seconds he had been happy, with the same happiness, but a stronger, as he had gained momentarily in the past from music, from Carlyon’s voice, from a sudden sense of companionship with other men.
The mist which had been white was turning grey. The real dark was approaching, but it made no apparent difference to the room. Andrews, feeling the comfortable warmth of the fire behind him, wondered how Carlyon was faring in a colder and surely more alien world. And yet was it more alien? Carlyon had the friendship and the trust of his two fellow fugitives. He was not alone. The old self-pity began to crawl back into Andrews’s heart, as he watched the girl’s motionless back.
“Can we light some candles,” he asked, “and make this room more cheerful?”
“There are two candlesticks on the table,” she said, keeping her forehead pressed to the window, “and two on the dresser. You can light them if you like.”
Andrews made a spill from a playbill, which he found in his pocket, and lit it at the fire. Then he passed, from candle to candle making little aspiring peaks of flame pierce the shadows. Slowly they rose higher and small haloes formed round their summits, a powdery glow like motes in sunlight. Cloaked from all draughts by the surrounding mist they burnt straight upwards, tapering to a point as fine as a needle. The shadows were driven back into the corners of the room where they crouched darkly like sulking dogs rebuked.
When Andrews had lit the last candle he turned and saw that Elizabeth was watching him. Joy and grief were both moods able to pass lightly across her face without disturbing the permanent thoughtfulness of her eyes, which seemed to regard life with a gaze devoid of emotion. The candles now tipped her face with gaiety. She made no reference to her short surrender to grief, but clapped her hands, so that he stared at her amazed by this rapid change of mood.
“I like this,” she said, “we’ll have tea. I’m glad to have someone to talk to—even you,” and she moved to the dresser and began to take out plates, cups, a loaf of bread, some butter, a kettle which she filled and put upon the fire. With proud and reverent fingers she drew a caddy from the dresser, handling it as reverently as a gold casket.
“I haven’t had tea,” he said slowly, “like this since I left home … I’ve wanted it though.” He hesitated. “It’s queer that you should be treating me like this, like a friend.”
Having pulled the only two chairs which the room held up to the fire, she regarded him with sombre amusement. “Am I treating you like a friend?” she asked. “I can’t tell. I’ve never had one.”
He had a sudden wish to tell her everything, from what he was fleeing and for what cause, but caution and a feeling of peace restrained him. He wished to forget it himself and cling only to this growing sense of intimacy,
