“He likes me. He likes so many people,” she said, as carelessly as before.
Eric nodded slowly and held out his hand.
“Well, good-night. I’ll do what I can.”
Though he could promise her little, she was better for the companionship and talk. In opening the door, he turned and saw her watching him; but now she was spiritless again, her hands were clasped in front of her, her shoulders were bowed, and she looked crestfallen, limp and fragile. Remembering how irritation at her pertness had warmed to impatient dislike on board the Lithuania, Eric blamed himself for intolerance towards a child whose worst crime was her childishness.
“Have you a telephone here?” he asked.
“There’s one downstairs that I use. Shall I shew you?”
“Oh, no, thanks.” Impulse sent him back into the room; and he shook hands with her again, as though to postpone for an instant the silent chill of loneliness which he could feel already settling upon her. Gaymer had contrived to make the girl uncommonly miserable; and, though unhappiness was a universal distemper of the soul, though Eric had told himself that Ivy’s relations to Gaymer were their own business, he knew that he could comfort her spirit by putting an arm round her thin shoulders, by kissing her forehead and allowing her to sob out her simple perplexity and pain of heart. A hundred anguished memories warned him of the price that he had already paid for compassion; common sense cried out that this was not his affair. And yet, unless he made it his affair, no one would; and he had now learned wisdom and knew where to stop. “What I meant was: if you ever feel lonely, ring me up and have a talk. I’m nearly always at home, night and day. I’m not too busy for that. Suggest a day for lunch. I lead a fairly solitary life myself.”
CHAPTER FOUR
EVERYBODY’S BUSINESS